There's Something About Albus
by sweaterweather21
Summary: Catalina Zabini was planning on an uneventful sixth year. Between Prefect duties, an overbearing mother, and studying for the NEWTs, the last thing she needs is something else to worry about. But Cat can't help but notice that Albus Potter seems to be up to something, and despite her good girl instincts, it seems she may have a nose for trouble after all. {an Albus/OC romance}
1. The One Where Voldemort Wears Designer

**There's Something About Albus  
** by sweaterweather21

* * *

 **Summary:** Catalina Zabini was planning on an uneventful sixth year. Between her duties as a Prefect, studying for the impending NEWTs, and keeping her overbearing mother complacent, the last thing she needed was something (or someone) else to worry about. But Cat can't help but notice that Albus Potter seems to be up to something, and despite her good girl instincts, it seems she may have a nose for trouble after all.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Harry Potter.

* * *

Chapter 1: Voldemort Wears Designer Clothing

 _"I'll let you in, on something big. I am not a white teeth teen. I tried to join, but never did. The way they are the way they seem, is something else, it's in the blood..."_

-White Teeth Teens (Lorde)

* * *

"Darling! The company's here!"

Catalina Zabini moaned, rolling over on her bed and burying her face in her pillow. Sooner or later she knew she'd have to leave her room, but the sound her mother's shrill voice didn't inspire much haste from her daughter.

It was August 31st. For most teenagers in Great Britain, the last day of summer was spent in a whirlwind of last minute-adventures in an attempt to soak up any remaining freedom. Unfortunately, Cat had a dinner party to attend.

The annual back-to-school dinner was the brainchild of her mother. Six years ago, Natalia Zabini had pulled out all the stops for a fancy dinner party to celebrate her daughter's upcoming first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Since then, she had scaled back a bit in an attempt to enjoy some last-minute quality time together with family and friends. Although Cat had yet to experience a back-to-school dinner that was anything short of miserable, the tradition had held firm throughout the years.

For one, Natalia made it a point to invite her awful grandmother, Theodora. Although Cat's parents had instructed to refer to her as Grandmother Zabini, the old lady insisted that Cat and her brother Matteo refer to her only as Theodora, in order to preserve her vitality. The woman was approaching seventy, but still had all her wits about her, dating a new man every month. To make matters worse, Theodora seemed to enjoy "accidentally" leaking details of her romantic conquests into casual conversation, which Cat could barely sit through without grimacing.

These dinners were always a formal affair, filled with idle conversation and conducted by the rules of etiquette that had been drilled into Cat's head from a young age. They were stuffy and boring, but Cat's job was to be the perfect pureblooded daughter and put on a good show for the guests.

In an act of miniscule disobedience, Cat remained face-down in her bed for another 30 seconds before checking her make-up for smudges in her full-length mirror. She tugged down on her dress, a slim black number with a high waist and gave one last reproachful look at the dreaded silver strappy heels adorning her feet. Last year she had dared to arrive at the dinner party wearing flats and Natalia had forced her to change her footwear. She wouldn't make that mistake again. Carefully, Cat made her way down the curved staircase, lamenting the event to come with every step.

She forced her lips into a smile as she entered the parlor, but it quickly evaporated once she saw who else had arrived.

Grandmother Theodora was enough to deal with, but then she had to go and pass on her genes to her other granddaughter: Cat's cousin, Giovanna de Luca.

She sat elegantly in an armchair, legs crossed at the ankles, showing off a sparkling pair of black stilettos to match a tightly-fitted cream-colored halter dress that hugged her every curve. Giovanna was seventeen, therefore only a year older than Cat, but Cat couldn't help feeling occasionally like she was reliving her awkward preteen years around her practically perfect cousin.

"Hello, cousin," Giovanna remarked smoothly.

"Hi, Giovanna," Cat managed in response. She chose a spot on the sofa next to her father Blaise on the opposite end of the room. He was deep in conversation with his brother-in-law, an extremely wealthy businessman who was unfortunate enough to marry into the Zabini family. Blaise gave his daughter a slight nod in acknowledgement, but otherwise made no effort to include Cat in the conversation, which she was fine with. The other female relatives chatted away closer to the entrance, but Cat was content to be present physically. Mentally, she was somewhere else for a few minutes until the doorbell sounded.

"Oh, that must be the Malfoys!" Natalia Zabini exclaimed. "It was just about time to head to the dining room anyway. Catalina, would you be a dear and welcome them in? Remind your brother to come down as well while you're at it."

"Yes, mother." Cat said, and made her exit from the parlor as quickly as possible without tripping over her heels and yanking open the door.

Cat had never been so happy to see that smirking blond face in her life.

"It's about time!" she hissed to Scorpius under her breath while ushering him through the foyer. She maintained a pleasant facial expression while welcoming his parents, but dropped it momentarily as she closed the door.

She made the effort to brighten back up as she turned around. "May I take your coat, Astoria?" she questioned politely. "Everyone is in the dining room already."

"Thank you, Catalina," Astoria Greengrass smiled back, shrugging off her light summer jacket before taking her husband's arm and proceeding down the hallway.

Scorpius followed Cat to the coat closet.

"What's up with you? Playing house-elf tonight got your knickers in a twist?" he asked, leaning his tall body against the wooden doorframe ever-so-casually.

"Of course not. And I'll tell your mother you said that!" Cat huffed, flicking Scorpius in the forehead.

"And I'll tell your mum you like to hit me in your spare time!" he countered.

"Oh, shut up Scorpius," Cat said, rolling her eyes in an attempt to feign nonchalance, although his threat didn't entirely miss its mark. Her mother was convinced that her eldest daughter and Scorpius would make the perfect couple, if only Cat would pursue him. She had confided in Scorpius about this, and although they both agreed it was ridiculous considering they were practically brother and sister, Scorpius still loved to lord the possibility over Cat's head.

"But seriously, stick by me during dinner," Cat continued. "Grandmum's here, and I do not want to spend the rest of the night hearing about her newest lover. I've already heard enough. Apparently he's thirty-four and quite the looker." She wrinkled her nose.

Scorpius's lip curled in disgust. "Gross."

"I know. Now let's get out of here, or mum'll ask me later how my private time with Scorpius Malfoy went!" Cat exclaimed, tugging on Scorpius's arm and leading him away from the closet.

She called out for Matteo as she passed the staircase and then entered the Zabini's formal dining room, which could seat up to forty comfortably.

Cat considered its large occupancy unnecessary, but would never voice that to her mother. Tonight it held eleven guests, all clustered around the far end of the table. Cat avoided the lone seat next to her grandmother, leading Scorpius to a pair of open seats next to each other. Like a gentleman, Scorpius pulled out her chair for her as she sat down. Cat smoothed down her skirt and nodded her thanks as her mother looked on approvingly from her spot next to her husband at the head of the table. As soon as she looked elsewhere, though, Cat shot Scorpius a glare. He only winked in return.

Just then, Matteo bounded into the room, earning an ireful glare from his mother for once instead of Catalina. Natalia chose not to comment, however, and her son slipped into the seat next to Grandmother Theodora with a small frown.

Cat sipped her water innocently until she noticed Giovanna aiming coy glances at Scorpius from across the table. Scorpius noticeably stiffened next to her, but forced a smile back.

"You didn't tell me _she_ was here," he mumbled under his breath as soon as Giovanna looked away.

"I know. She's awful." Cat responded flatly. "She's like Voldemort, except in designer clothing."

Scorpius shuddered.

The housekeeper, Connie, came in with salads next, momentarily distracting Cat from her whispered conversation with Scorpius. As the adults chatted about the new Supreme Mugwump, Cat poked at her salad and let her gaze drift across the table.

Giovanna had momentarily stopped undressing Scorpius with her eyes from across the table and was now engrossed in a conversation with Natalia. She smiled, flicked her hair, and chatted animatedly, no doubt regaling some fantastic party she'd attended or an exotic vacation she'd taken.

Cat did her best to ignore her. Instead, she continued scanning the rest of the table just in time to catch her younger brother, Matteo, mouthing the words "help me!" in between bites of green beans. He was the Zabini sibling hapless enough to be seated next to Grandmother, and by the looks of it, she was narrating some encounter with an ex-lover that left Matteo's eyes bulging. Cat was glad she was sitting far enough away to avoid any details of the conversation.

Scorpius had also witnessed this interaction, evidenced by the suppressed snicker she heard coming from her left. She tried to discreetly elbow him in the side to get him to shut up, but missed and knocked over her water goblet in the process. Hastily, she mopped up the contents with her napkin, but her mother was already shooting her a glare. Giovanna only smirked.

Cat did her best to behave for the rest of dinner. She talked idly with Scorpius's father for a couple of minutes about her position as a Prefect at Hogwarts and even dodged a couple of questions from her grandmother about her love life. ("Are you dating anyone yet?" to which Cat shook her head, and the ensuing "Well, that's a shame," to which Cat forced a polite smile even though she could sense Scorpius's smirk without even having to look at him.)

It was a good forty minutes of tortured civility until Cat's mum excused the children from the table so the adults could talk. Cat disliked being referred to as a child, but took the opportunity to leave the dinner party from hell as a miracle from Merlin.

They had barely exited the door before Giovanna made her move.

"Scorpius?" she purred, "would you like to sit with me on the patio for a while?"

Unfortunately for her, Scorpius had been expecting her attempts to get him alone. "Yes, I'd love to!" he responded in fake sincerity. "It's such a nice night, maybe we could all go swimming."

Giovanna frowned, her perfectly groomed eyebrows inching closer together. "I was thinking something more along the lines of—"

"Perfect!" Matteo interrupted. "I'll get my trunks!"

"Remind me to thank your brother later," Scorpius whispered in Cat's ear as they made their way through several hallways lined with portraits to the back patio overlooking the pool. Giovanna trailed behind.

Scorpius pushed open the French doors and was the first to settle into a wicker chair. He wasted no time removing a small silver flask from his pocket and taking a sip.

"Scorpius!" Cat chided, but inwardly she couldn't blame him. Those dinner parties really were horrendous.

The blond only shrugged his shoulders in response, holding it out to Catalina teasingly.

"No thanks," she said, but allowed a small grin to slide onto her face.

"I'll have some," Giovanna spoke up. Cat's smile vanished. Scorpius offered her the flask, and she took a long swig before giving it back.

"Drinking already I see," Matteo commented as her burst through the doors, sans a shirt and sporting a navy pair of swimming trunks.

Scorpius only smirked. "Want some?"

Matteo's blue eyes lit up immediately but Cat wasn't having any of it.

"No way. You're fourteen, Matty."

"Yeah, well, we all can't be the perfect child like you," he pouted even going as far as to push out his bottom lip.

She copied his face and twirled her hair, earning a small chuckle from Scorpius.

They all descended into silence for a few moments before Giovanna piped up.

"So, I haven't seen much of you this summer, Scorpius. What've you been up to?"

Cat held back a snort. She had only seen Giovanna two other times during the summer, but of course her cousin would choose to address Scorpius.

Scorpius looked bored, but decided to humor her. "Well, I spent a good deal of the summer with Al."

Giovanna's eyes widened. "Al as in Albus Potter?"

"The one and only," Scorpius confirmed. "His parents took us to the World Cup."  
"Fascinating," Giovanna commented blandly. Cat wasn't really one for Quidditch herself, but it was obvious Giovanna had no idea how to continue the conversation beyond that.

She waited a few moments before attempting to strike up the conversation again, flashing a dazzling grin in Scorpius's direction as she spoke. "I saw you in the papers quite a bit. You looked handsome, as always."

This time, Cat couldn't hold back her snicker. Giovanna glared.

"It's part of the package when you hang around the Potters." Scorpius drawled. "They seem to be well-known around these parts.

Matteo laughed outright at the understatement. Cat was a little more pensive. As a child, she remembered reading the tabloid specials about all of the Potter and Weasley clan and wondering what it would be like to live an entire life in the spotlight like that. Cat had been excited to find out that Albus Potter, Rose Weasley, and Lucy Weasley – just three of the large brood – would be attending Hogwarts in the same year as her. However, in her five years at the school, she hadn't had much contact with them, and remained content listening to stories about them secondhand. Albus and Rose were Gryffindors, while Lucy was a Ravenclaw, and as a Slytherin, Cat seemed to run in different circles. As a result, Cat still found them intimidating.

Scorpius had followed Cat into Slytherin, and really had no excuse for becoming such good friends with Albus Potter. Privately, Cat always had always thought he sought out the Gryffindor golden boy's friendship just to piss off his father, but Scorpius always became dodgy whenever the subject came up.

Eager to break up the ensuing awkwardness caused by Giovanna's repeated advances and Scorpius's subsequent rejections, Cat spoke up. "I think Matty has the right idea. What do you say we take a dip in the pool?"

* * *

Cat woke up the next morning later than she had planned. She hadn't meant to stay up past midnight, but the adults never beckoned them, and they ended up swimming longer than she thought. The night had still been warm and the cool water had felt wonderful against Cat's skin. But most importantly, Giovanna had left early, claiming she needed her rest and providing the rest of them with a much more enjoyable evening.

Still dreaming about the last remnant of summer she had enjoyed last night, Cat trudged to the bathroom. She washed her face, running a comb through her long, dark strands and putting on a bit of make-up to conceal her tired eyes and some mascara for good measure.

Cat had packed her trunk yesterday morning, but she still felt the need to run around her room looking for anything else she didn't want to leave behind. She grabbed a package of owl treats from her desk drawer as well as her favorite pair of running shoes which has been stashed in a corner, and shoved them in her trunk. Even with an extension charm and a weight-reducing charm on it, she still struggled to carry the heaving thing down the stairs.

Unceremoniously, Cat dropped it on the ground with a plunk, and quickly collapsed on top of it. Matteo was chronically late, and was probably doing some last-minute packing.

Her father strolled through the foyer next, his hair still wet from his shower and nibbling on a piece of toast.

"Good morning, Catalina," he said smoothly. "Did you get any breakfast?"  
"I thought I'd just buy some on the train."

Blaise Zabini rummaged through a drawer on a nearby side table, and produced a handful of galleons, far too much for a simple snack from the cart. Nevertheless, he handed them over to Cat.

"Um, thank you," Cat said, suddenly unsure of herself. She noticed his bathrobe for the first time in their conversation and made her best attempt to be casual when asking him about it.

"Oh, do you have somewhere else to be?"

"Unfortunately, yes," he replied crisply. "My secretary booked me for a meeting at ten with this elusive client and I'm afraid it's impossible to reschedule."

Fiddling with the padlock on her trunk, Cat tried her best to appear unfazed. She hated how this scene seemed to replay over and over despite her best attempts to avoid getting her hopes up in the first place.

Just then, her mother made her way down the stairs in a manner that was graceful, yet impossible to ignore.

Blaise greeted her smoothly. "Good morning, Natalia."

She nodded in his direction, then addressed her eldest child. "Darling," she began. "We simply must discuss the details of your coming of age party before you leave. I know a year seems ages away but really, I'll need you to stay in touch with me throughout the year so everything is perfect, okay? There are fitting to consider, the guest list to consider, and flower arrangements to be made. You need to be on top of this if everything is to go smoothly. Cat, are you listening? You only turn seventeen once, after all."

Cat blinked as Natalia smiled, flashing her perfectly white teeth toward her daughter in a way that was slightly reminiscent of a griffin eyeing up his prey.

Her smile began fading as Natalia Zabini waited for a sign of confirmation from her daughter.

"Sounds good. I'll owl you every week," Cat managed, a beat too late.

Natalia checked her watch. She frowned, revealing a few miniscule wrinkles near her mouth. "Matty, dear! We really must be off!" She called up the stairs.

Cat sighed. She couldn't wait to be back at Hogwarts.

* * *

With no thanks to Matty, three-fourths of the Zabini family arrived to Platform 9 and ¾ with only two minutes to spare. Despite their tardiness, Natalia tried to deliver another last-minute reminder about the importance of carrying oneself as a lady. Cat listened half-heartedly, but started planning her escape route once her mother brought up possible napkin colors for the party.

"It's not as if I'm getting married, mother." Cat grimaced. If this blasted coming of age party was this much of a headache, she'd hate to see her mother preparing for a wedding. The thought of it alone made her shiver.

Hastily, Cat leaned in and gave her mother a hug. Natalia was perpetually enveloped in a lilac-scented mist, which made Cat cough even though she was holding her breath. She pulled away abruptly but managed a genuine smile. Despite all of Natalia's airs, she really did mean the best.

There was still the matter of getting her trunk on the train, however. Cat grunted as her muscles strained to pick her trunk up.

"Oh, if only you had a nice boy to carry that for you!" she heard her mother exclaim.

Cat nearly dropped the trunk in annoyance. Nearby, Matty snickered but made no attempt to help her. "Bugger off," she growled.

"Love you too, sis!" he responded cheerily, cutting her off and leaping aboard without a problem, purposely making it look easy just to spite Cat's difficulties.

She huffed. This was karmic revenge for calling him "chicken legs" all those years ago. Matteo was still a lanky git, but he had developed some muscles over the summer, and never failed to remind Cat of the fact.

Taking a deep breath, Cat steadied herself in front of the train. She could do this.

"Oi! Hurry up, would you!"

Cat was not in the mood. She turned on her heel, eyes flashing as she locked in on a mousy-looking second year standing right behind her.

"For your information, you little-"

"Relax, Kitty! Don't bitch out the second year! It was me." Cat whirled around face an approaching Tanner Boot, a fellow Slytherin sixth year and one of Scorpius's friends.

Cat's eyes widened, and she murmured a quick apology at the small boy before turning back to Tanner.

He pushed his golden-brown hair out of his eyes and looked her up-and-down knowingly. "Need some help?"

Cat looked down toward the heavy luggage and then back toward the train with a sigh. "Yes, please."

"Anything for you, Kitty," Tanner responded with a smirk.

Cat rolled her eyes. She hated the nickname, an oh-so-clever spin-off of "Cat," but she figured now wasn't the time to put up a fuss about it after someone had finally helped her with her trunk. "Thanks," she muttered.

"Anytime," he replied, then headed down the corridor, leaving Cat alone with her trunk once again.

Cat shrunk her trunk and put it in her pocket, as she was finally allowed to use magic once aboard the train.

Her bad mood refused to dissipate, and she scowled all the way to the prefects' compartment, where she slumped into the open seat next to Scorpius.

He eyed her curiously. "What's got your wand in a knot?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"I wouldn't ask if I didn't want to."

Cat ran her fingers through her hair in exasperation.

"It's mum again."

"When isn't it?" Scorpius smirked.

Cat kicked him, and began her tirade.

"She went off about my coming of age party again this morning. I don't even want a bloody party in the first place, not that she knows anything about me anyway. And then just as I was getting on the train, she has the nerve to start lecturing me again. I just wanted to give her a quick wave and hop on the train because Merlin knows Matty made us late, but she kept rambling about napkins and how I'm about to be presented to society. I can't deal with her!" She exclaimed, and paused to catch her breath.

"Is that all?"

Cat narrowed her eyes. "Actually, I'm not done yet. I finally got away from her and was carrying my trunk to the train like an independent woman and she had the nerve to insinuate that I needed a boyfriend to help carry my things for me!"

She finished and looked at him pointedly.

"You do need a boyfriend," Scorpius drawled in response. "You have no muscles." He squeezed her upper arm for emphasis.

Cat felt the urge to kick Scorpius again, but refrained when she heard a chuckle coming from Scorpius's right.

"Eavesdrop much?" she retorted to their mysterious companion.

"It's difficult to block you out when you're broadcasting to the entire compartment, sweetheart." The eavesdropper leaned forward to speak, revealing his identity in the process.

It took Cat a moment to recognize him. Black hair, charming grin, and damn, those green eyes. Of course it was Albus Potter.

She would be lying if she said she hadn't harbored a tiny little crush on him from first year – all the girls did. His older brother, James, had swept through Hogwarts first, doing more than his fair share of breaking hearts, but Albus was appealing in a more subdued way. He was known for being easy-going, handsome, and kind, a combination most of the female population at Hogwarts found difficult to resist. But Morgana! The summer had been kind to him on top of that, giving him a nice tan and some added definition in his arms that was sure to make the girls of Hogwarts even more rabid than usual.

Cat could only blush in response. Life was really just unfair sometimes.

"Anyway," Albus continued, "you're not alone. James was making fun of Rosie for being single the other day and she hexed his hair off, if it makes you feel any better."

"Atta girl," Cat said, recovering from her embarrassment by focusing her attention on Scorpius and ruffling his hair. "I ought to do that to you."

Her blond friend clutched his head protectively, but was slightly distracted by the mention of Rose Weasley.

"How is that darling cousin of yours, Al? She seemed a bit irked at me before I left your house."

"A bit irked? Scor, she did a happy dance around the house after you went through the Floo."

Scorpius opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by the sudden arrival of the redhead in question herself. She settled into the seat next to Albus.

"Hello, Al," she said good-naturedly before her voice took on a darker quality as she addressed Scorpius. "Malfoy."

Rose took notice of Cat sitting on the other end, and offered up a small smile in her direction but said nothing.

She obviously didn't remember her name and Cat was about to introduce herself before Scorpius spoke up.

"Her name's Catalina Zabini, Weasley, which you might know if you paid attention to anyone but yourself once in a while."

Both Cat and Albus stiffened at Scorpius's antagonistic statement.

Rose maintained her smile but it grew slightly more feral as her eyes narrowed toward Scorpius. "I was about to ask, Malfoy, before you rudely decided to run your mouth off."

"The only rude one here is you," Scorpius managed before Albus decided to attempt to placate the two.

"Seriously, Rose, calm down," he said to his cousin, whose cheeks were beginning to match her hair color. "And Scorpius, don't provoke her. Merlin, it's only the first prefect's meeting of the year and you two are already at each other's throats."

Neither looked remotely abashed, but Cat and Albus were spared any further disagreements by the arrival of the Head Boy and Girl.

McGonagall's selections for Heads were always a hot topic, but Cat wasn't surprised at all to see Fred Weasley and Miranda Mockbridge standing on the platform.

Fred Weasley was yet another of the infamous brood. He lived up to his name by being quite charming and devastatingly good-looking, although he differed in some aspects by choosing to use his powers for good, not evil. He was known for having a great sense of humor, but never seemed to offend anyone. Fred handled responsibility well, which had earned him a prefect position in his fifth year and Head Boy now in his seventh. He wore it well, too, with his Gryffindor tie perfectly straight and his robes framing his body nicely.

The Head Girl was Miranda Mockbridge, a Hufflepuff and a total sweetheart. She was the exact opposite of Fred in terms of looks; while he was tall and dark, she was petite and fair, with rosy cheeks and curly light brown hair. However, she wasn't a surprise for the position either. Miranda could typically be found in the library tutoring some first year in her spare time, and was notorious for offering free copies of her meticulously organized class notes to anyone who asked nicely. Despite her quiet nature, people tended to listen to her.

Cat braced herself for the typical speech which she had learned last year, but instead Fred announced that all twenty-four prefects would be participating in an ice-breaker activity to learn everyone's names. Scorpius gave Rose a pointed look at this, but to her credit, she pretended not to notice him.

The game itself went smoothly. Cat prided herself on her ability to connect names and faces, which she had successfully developed after many years of meeting strangers at her parents' dinner parties, and as a result, did rather well.

After the last person had gone, Miranda announced that they could return to their seats.

Cat sat down first, and to her surprise, Albus slid in next to her, occupying Scorpius's former spot. "I thought it'd be funny to make them sit by each other," he said with a grin as the rest of the seats around them filled up.

"Funny?" Cat questioned. "More like dangerous."

"You're probably right," Albus agreed with a chuckle. "How far do you think they'll make it through the meeting without arguing?"

Cat hesitated. She knew Scorpius well, and for the most part, he was a pretty calm guy. When it came to Rose Weasley, though, his fuse was significantly shorter. "Eight minutes."

"That's generous. I give them three."

Cat shook her head.

"Oh, so you disagree?" Albus countered. "Want to make it a little more interesting and put five galleons on it?"

Luckily, Scorpius came down the aisle before Cat could answer.

"What's this I hear about gambling?"

"I told Catalina here I'd give her five galleons if she could charm Freddie's pants invisible without him noticing. I heard she's a genius at nonverbal spells."

Cat flushed slightly under the compliment, but was saved yet again from answering by Scorpius.

"Save your money, mate. Cat's never pulled a prank in her life."

"And I'm not about to start on the Head Boy!" Cat piped up.

They laughed, only trailing off when Rose reluctantly sat down next to Scorpius. "There were no other open seats," she muttered grumpily.

Albus looked at her pointedly as Miranda began her speech about patrols. "It's on."

As Fred and Miranda alternated talking points, Cat tried to pay attention but mostly failed miserably. She didn't like to admit it, but the mere thought of Albus Potter sitting next to her was distraction enough, and on top of that, she was monitoring Scorpius and Rose for any sign of a disagreement.

Five minutes in, however, Albus nudged her. "Scor's asleep!" he exclaimed in a hushed tone.

Cat tried to stifle her giggle, but it didn't really work. A nearby prefect glared, but Cat ignored her and stretched forward to get a glimpse of Scorpius. His head had fallen onto Albus's right shoulder and his chest moved up and down slightly as Rose looked on with a frown.

For Cat and Albus, the remaining ten minutes of the meeting were spent trying to suppress laughter as Scorpius mumbled, jerked, and drooled in his sleep. With each action, Rose's expression changed from annoyance to outright disgust. When Fred called the meeting to a close, the prefects cheered at the relatively early dismissal and Rose hurriedly got up to leave after saying a quick goodbye to Albus.

Scorpius was still sleeping on Albus's shoulder, so Cat lingered for a few moments. "You know," she began, "because they lasted the whole meeting without fighting, I think this means that I won the bet."

"What bet? We never shook on it!"

Cat rolled her eyes.

"Scorpius was sleeping the whole time anyway!"

"What, you can't admit that I won?" Cat asked with a grin.

"Fine, you win. I have a mind to make this tosser pay anyway. It's his damn fault I lost the bet." Albus conceded, finally shaking Scorpius off of him. The blond fell backward and woke up with a jolt.

"You owe me five galleons, Scor," Cat said as she stood up to leave.

Blearily, Scorpius looked up at her. "What? What are you talking about?"

Cat laughed and turned toward Albus one last time. "Don't worry, we're square. Having this moron as a best friend is punishment enough for losing the bet."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** So there's the first chapter! I must say, this plot bunny has been running rampant in my head for quite some time now, and I'm excited to finally have this first chapter written down. I know I've been MIA in the FanFiction circles for quite some time now, but that's what the first semester of college will do to you! Anyway, I'd love to hear what you have to say about this first chapter! Do you like Cat's personality and background? Is Giovanna a huge bitch? Do you love Albus already? I kind of do.

 **More Information:** This will probably be around 30-ish chapters, and will be primarily an Albus/OC romance, although I'm tempted to include a bit of Rose/Scorpius just because I've grown to love that pairing as well. I'm also in the hunt for a good beta, so feel free to volunteer or give recommendations :)

Anyway, that's it. Thanks for reading, all :)


	2. The One with the Big Splash

**There's Something About Albus**  
by sweaterweather21

* * *

 **Disclaimer:** I own nothing except the occasional OC.

 **Last Chapter:** Cat attended a horrendous dinner party, hopped on the train at Platform 9  & 3/4, and won a bet against Albus Potter.

* * *

Chapter 2: The One with the Big Splash

 _Just get me to the airport, put me on a plane  
Hurry hurry hurry, before I go insane  
I can't control my fingers, I can't control my brain_

I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones

* * *

Cat smiled to herself as she shepherded the wide-eyed first years off the train and toward Hagrid, who was directing them onto the boats. She found herself in much better spirits after the prefect meeting. Between Scorpius's antics and her wager with Albus Potter, her previous conversation with her mother had been mostly forgotten.

She had just nudged the last pig-tailed first year toward the boats when she was suddenly accosted by a whirlwind of dirty blonde hair and a bone-crushing hug.

"Whoa, Annie!" she exclaimed, pushing the short girl off her but smiling nonetheless, "what's with the bear hug? It hasn't even been a week since I've seen you!"

"I know," the blonde grinned back sheepishly, "I just figured you'd need some comfort after that dinner with Giovanna you wrote me about."

Cat cringed, the memory of last night's dinner still fresh in her mind. She played it off with a joke. "If you're going to bring that up again, I'm going to need more than a hug to make me feel better!"

Without skipping a beat, Annie wrapped her arms around Cat once more. They shared a laugh for another moment before Cat pulled away, stepping back to take a look at her best friend.

Cat had met Annabelle Bristow back in first year, when they had shared one of the very boats the current first years were just embarking on. Cat had been very concerned about the possibility of a sea monster swallowing their boat whole, thanks to a rumor she'd heard from Scorpius, but Annabelle had immediately introduced herself, announced that she only went by her nickname "Annie" and proceeded to talk Cat's ear off for the duration of the boat ride. They sat together at the feast and claimed beds beside each other that night, creating the foundation of what would be a lasting friendship.

Annie had been a tiny first-year and was still petite. Cat liked to tease her that she barely passed the height requirement at Belby Towers, the wizarding amusement park. What she lacked in stature, however, Annie made up for in personality. She was one of those people who could talk to anyone with ease, constantly making jokes and telling stories that made everyone laugh. Annie had a special talent for making people feel good about themselves, and Cat considered herself lucky to be her friend.

"Are you done with the firsties?" Annie questioned.

Cat nodded in response. "I was on my way before I got mugged!"

Annie shook her head. "Well, I'm sorry for being excited to see my best friend! Now hurry up—Dahlia and Cecily have already reserved a carriage!"

Grabbing Cat's arm, Annie started walking briskly in the direction of the cages, and Cat found herself half-running in an attempt to keep up with the blonde's quick pace.

They entered the second to last carriage and were greeted their two other roommates, Dahlia Vaisey and Cecily Warrington.

Dahlia, a waif of a girl with an unkempt mane of brown hair and pretty green eyes, immediately stood up and gave Cat a hug. "How was the losers' meeting? We missed you on the train!"

Cat laughed. "It was actually fine, thanks Dahlia. Still feels weird not sitting in our compartment, though."

"Eh, you're here now. But more importantly, will you be here for girls' night in the dormitory after the feast?"

"No patrol tonight – I'm so in!"

"I may or may not have a bottle of Ogden's in my trunk if we want to make things interesting," Cecily interjected slyly.

"Oh, you would, Cece!" Cat retorted with a smile.

"Are you not up for it?" Cecily responded, raising a perfectly-arched eyebrow in Cat's direction.

"Believe it or not, we do have to make it to classes tomorrow."

"Fuck classes tomorrow," Cecily pouted, her red lips forming a perfect O.

"Oh, I would never!" Cat feigned a gasp, covering her mouth with her hand. "That sounds like your job, Cece."

Annie and Dahlia laughed, while Cecily simply flicked a long lock of perfectly-curled blonde hair over her shoulder. "Wouldn't be the first time!"

Cat made her way over to Cecily and gave her a hug. "Aww, I missed your snarky sense of humor this summer. How was Greece?"

"Oh, the usual. Sandy beaches, excellent cuisine, blazing hot sun. Not quite as hot as all the Greek men I ran into on the beach…" she trailed off with secretive smile.

"Oooh! Details, please!" Dahlia exclaimed. "I need some excitement in my life. My whole summer was spent ignoring the creepy old warlocks who liked to hit on me at the pub."

"That's awful, Dahlia," Annie chimed in sympathetically, pausing only a moment before inquiring about the sordid details or Cecily's summer. "But Cece, don't leave us hanging!"

"Well, his name was Thomas," Cecily smirked, "and that's about as far as we got in the way of introductions."

Annie rolled her eyes. "You're such a tease. I was hoping for more of a story than that."

"Oh, so you want more details?"

"Actually, I think we're almost here!" Cat interrupted.

Cecily gave Cat a sideways smile. "Don't worry, I'll save all the juicy bits for our girls' night after the feast."

"Can't wait!" Cat responded as cheerfully as she could muster.

The carriage ground to a halt, and Cat had to bid her friends goodbye. She had fulfilled the first half of her prefect duty by helping the first-years to the boats, and now she had to help them out and escort them to the Entrance Hall.

The boats began pulling in just as Catalina arrived at the dock. She wasn't exactly sure what to do, but followed the lead of the Head Boy and Girl, casting a mooring charm to keep the boats in place and offering a helping hand to the mostly-terrified first years.

She had just helped a blond-haired set of twins off of one of the last boats when she heard a loud splash coming from behind her, followed by a loud wail and an "Oh, shit!"

Cat whirled around just in time to see a prefect with curly brown hair jumping off the dock and into the thigh-deep water below. One of the rowboats floated a few meters away, capsized.

 _What in the name of Merlin was going on?_

Her question was answered as soon as it was posed. When her fellow prefect stood up to walk back to the shore, he was carrying a tiny first-year in his arms. She must've fallen into the water. Cat watched from the dock as he gently lowered her Converse-clad feet to the ground before coming to her senses and rushing over to help.

"Are you hurt?" she asked softly.

The girl looked up at her with big brown eyes and shook her head no. Cat pushed her stringy, wet hair out of her face before noticing that the girl's lips were blue and her teeth were chattering. Quickly, she cast a warming charm on the girl and conjured a quilt, draping it over her small shoulders.

She turned to the prefect next to her. He was much taller than her, so she had to glance upwards to look at him. "What happened?" she demanded.

The boy shrugged. "I think she dropped something in the lake. Next thing, I knew, she tumbled in."

"My wand!" the girl suddenly exclaimed. "It's still in the lake!"

Cat's eyes widened, but she reacted quickly. "Accio wand!" she shouted, aiming her own wand to a spot near the capsized boat.

Luckily, the wand came spiraling out of the water, landing neatly in Cat's outstretched palm. The first year girl reached for it greedily, and Cat relented. She understood what the girl felt like. Her own wand was a part of her; she felt lost without it.

"Take good care of that, now," she chided gently, "no dropping it in the lake anymore!"

Though still slightly teary, Cat's comment elicited a small smile from the first year. "Oh, never!" she managed to respond.

"I'm glad you've got it back now. What's your name?"

"Elaine Runcorn!" she piped up with a little more energy this time. Her hair and robes were almost completely dry now, thanks to Cat's warming charm.

"Well, Elaine, if you want I think you could go catch up with the rest of your classmates now. Don't worry too much about the Sorting Ceremony. With any luck, you'll be a Slytherin, just like me!" she teased.

"If she's really lucky, she'll be a Ravenclaw. That's where all the best witches go!"

Cat and Elaine both twisted their heads to the source of the interruption. Cat's fellow prefect held out his blue-and-bronze tie by way of explanation. "Of course, I may be a bit biased," he admitted with a smirk.

His smile was contagious. Cat grinned too, and showed Elaine her Slytherin tie. "I was just joking, too. I'm sure you'll enjoy whatever House you end up in."

"I'm hoping for Ravenclaw," she admitted. "Sorry," she added a moment later with a glance toward Cat's Slytherin green prefect badge.

"No worries," Cat assured her. "Now run along and join the rest your class."

Elaine shrugged off the quilt and handed it back to Cat. "Thank you both," she said genuinely, locking eyes with both Cat and the Ravenclaw prefect.

"No problem," he responded. "There's nothing like making a big splash on your first day of Hogwarts."

Elaine let out a giggle before bounding over to the main doors and joining the rest of the first-years by the main doors. Cat watched her leave, happy she had recovered from her spill.

Elaine handed Cat the quilt back, and bounded over to the main doors. Cat watched her leave, happy she had recovered from her spill.

"Quick wandwork back there."

Lost in her thoughts, Cat turned toward the sound of the voice. Once again, it was the Ravenclaw prefect with the curly hair. She blushed involuntarily.

"Thanks, but I should really be complimenting you for dragging the poor girl out of the water! That was pretty incredible."

He shrugged, sheepishly gesturing to the bottom half of his shirt and trousers, which were completely soaked. "Ah, but I wasn't smart enough to remember to use my wand instead of jumping in!"

Cat laughed. "You know, for someone who was just bragging about Ravenclaw, you sure seemed like a Gryffindor back there!"

"You wound me, Zabini!" he responded as his eyes lit up and his lips spread into a grin. "Calling me a lion—now that's low."

"I'm a Slytherin. We're supposed to play dirty, didn't you know?"

"Yeah, you seemed pretty evil back there when you saved that first year's wand from being consumed by the giant squid."

"Shh, don't tell anyone!" Cat declared, but she was smiling. "You'll ruin my reputation."

Cat looked up at him just in time to see him push a wet lock of hair away from his forehead. "Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly, "let me help you dry off!"

"I'm fine, really," the boy said.

"Nonsense!" Cat cried before casting the charm. "There! You're as good as new…" she trailed off, realizing that for the life of her, she couldn't remember the boy's name.

"Benjamin," he supplied after a moment.

"Right." Now it was Cat's turn to be sheepish. "Benjamin Goldstein—I knew that!"

He smiled again, and Cat found herself even more flustered by the sight of his perfect grin. "You're good. Thanks for the warming charm."

"Well, it's the least I could do after you jumped into the lake!"

He looked pensive for a moment before gazing directly at Cat. "You know, I might've done it sooner if I knew it would impress you this much."

Cat did her best to laugh it off, but his loaded comment had its intended effect: her stomach was currently doing somersaults. "Please—I'm still not sure you're not a Gryffindor in disguise after a stunt like that!"

"I would never be caught dead wearing scarlet and gold," he proclaimed, crossing his index and middle fingers and holding them over his heart. "Wizard scout's honor."

Cat burst into laughter once more before noticing that the rest of the prefects had cleared out. "I guess we should head inside now, huh?"

Benjamin nodded, and Cat couldn't resist teasing him further as they made their way through the Entrance Hall. "Unless you want to make your own big splash by entering fashionably late?" she questioned.

"I think I've had enough of those for today," he retorted with yet another brilliant smile as he opened one of the large wooden doors leading into the Great Hall.

"See you around, Zabini."

Cat smiled in response, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She allowed herself one last glance at the tall figure of Benjamin Goldstein making his way to the Ravenclaw table before quietly heading toward the Slytherin table.

She slipped into an empty seat next to Annie—who, by the look on her face, had definitely noticed Cat's entrance with the Ravenclaw prefect. Cat got the feeling that she would definitely be hearing more it about it later.

Thanks to her previous adventure, Cat had missed most of the Sorting. She spotted a couple of unfamiliar faces at the end of the table and regretted that she hadn't been able to watch. Betting on the potential Houses of each of the first years with Scorpius and Annie was practically a tradition. As a prefect, she wasn't sure she should be partaking in gambling, but then again, she never said anything about James Potter, who was not-so-discreetly exchanging galleons with some of the other Gryffindors over at the far table.

The rescue of Elaine Runcorn and her subsequent conversation with Benjamin Goldstein had taken up so much time that Cat barely had enough time to scrape together a plate of dinner; her fellow Slytherins had made short work of the veritable banquet the house elves had prepared. Headmistress McGonagall was just finishing up her typical no-nonsense beginning of term speech as Cat took her first bite. She had managed to snag some leftover chicken from Annie's plate and some scrapings from the bowl of mashed potatoes.

Many students stood up, signaling the end of the feast, and Cat looked toward the first years, who seemed to be confused as to what to do. She couldn't recall if she was supposed to direct them to their dorms or not. Luckily, Scorpius seemed to catch on to her distress.

"Relax! You don't have to be in Prefect mode all the time—the fifth years are in charge of taking the little firsties to the dorm, remember?"

Cat glanced toward Mathieu St. Pierre and Ramona Blackburn who were currently escorting the new students out of the hall and tried not to look abashed.

"You're right, Scorp," she said, taking another bite of chicken and avoiding Scorpius's eyes.

"And you thought I was sleeping during the Prefect meeting!" he declared triumphantly. "Even wagered a bet with Al Potter over it. I dare say you two seemed very friendly throughout the meeting." Scorpius trailed off, managing to keep a serious face, save for his eyes which betrayed his mirth.

Always adept at sniffing out gossip, Cecily nosed into the conversation.

"A Gryffindor, Cat?" she drawled, "really?"

Cat resisted rolling her eyes and turned toward Scorpius once more. "Well, I had to make conversation with someone, considering you were practically drooling as you slept!"

Cecily tapped her chin as if she was deep in thought. "If you're going to sample the Gryffindors, I suppose Albus is a decent pick. His eyes are _so_ dreamy, and he's practically a god on the Quidditch pitch." She looked up at Scorpius. "And I seem to remember that the lions trounced our team last year when he caught the Snitch within ten minutes, so maybe you should take some notes from him."

"Oh, fuck off, Warrington," Scorpius responded. "You wouldn't know a bludger from a snitch if it hit you in the face."

Cecily scoffed, but remained quiet. Cat heaved a sigh of relief, thankful she hadn't had to intervene to keep the peace.

The Great Hall was practically empty now. The only stragglers were Cat's friends, a group of fourth-year Hufflepuffs, and small crowd of older students over at the Gryffindor table. Cat couldn't help but notice Albus Potter as he got up to leave.

She also couldn't mistake the fact that he was hand-in-hand with Talia Boot.

A wave of embarrassment washed over Cat. Externally, she did her best to hide her blush, but internally, she was berating herself. _Why did she assume Albus was flirting with her on the train? How could she have forgotten that he had a girlfriend?_

 _She was such an idiot…_

She tried her best to moderate Annie and Cecily's current disagreement over which of them had been Malcolm Bole's first kiss, but her brain was still trying to process the relationship of Albus Potter and Talia Boot. Wishful thinking must have contributed to her assumption that he was single; she would've never been so flirtatious with him on the train had she known.

And it wasn't like she could compete with Talia Boot, anyhow. The girl was an honest-to-Merlin social butterfly who never had a bad word to say about anyone. Cat tried not to stare too obviously at the back of her perfect head of golden-brown hair as she exited the Great Hall, devilishly handsome boyfriend in tow.

Cat took a deep breath. She and Albus had shared one semi-flirtatious interaction on the Hogwarts Express, and here she was reading into it like one of Lavender Brown's romance novels that always seemed to be circulating around the female population of the school. He was Scorpius's best friend, anyway. It was too weird.

"But remember when we played spin the bottle in the common room back in third year?" Annie's voice cut into Cat's internal monologue.

Cecily answered with a look of derision. "For the record, that was not my idea. That game is _so_ juvenile."

Annie only smirked. "Well, you didn't seem to think so when it was your turn and the bottle almost landed on Royce Pennington."

Cecily scrunched her nose. "Ugh, I ended up kissing Stewart Pritchard."

Both girls shuddered.

"Hey, be nice!" Cat admonished gently. "Stewart's a nice guy. He always tries to help me with my Potions essays."

"Don't worry, he's all yours," Cecily retorted.

Cat resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. "Thanks for the generous offer, Cece."

"Anytime. I'm more than happy to give away my sloppy seconds. Just like what Annabelle over here got when she kissed Bole!"

"For the last time, Cecily—"

"All right, I think it's time to head to the dungeons!" Cat interrupted. Indeed, they were the last four people left in the Great Hall. Scorpius and Tanner had disappeared during Annie and Cecily's argument, while Dahlia refused to take sides and instead was nibbling away on a piece of cheesecake from dinner. Even the professors had retired to their quarters.

"Ugh, I feel like I could fall asleep walking back our room," Dahlia spoke up as she rose from the bench.

"No, you can't!" Cecily said, widening her eyes at the slim brunette, "we have a date with Ogden's Finest, don't you remember?"

Dahlia visibly perked up, linking arms with Cecily. "The only boy I'll ever love!" she exclaimed with a laugh.

The other three joined in, and practically skipped out of the Great Hall.

* * *

No one in the Slytherin sixth year girls' dormitory was skipping the next morning. Haven chosen to forego the firewhiskey the previous night, Cat was devoid of a hangover, but still not in the greatest of moods. She had never been a morning person, and she was not looking forward to dealing with her three hungover friends on this particular morning.

To no surprise, she was the first one awake. She thrust open the curtains, not particularly concerned with the reactions of her roommates as she headed toward the showers. By the time she turned the water off, she was beginning to hear the rumblings of her friends as they awoke from their drunken slumber.

"Hey Cat, have you seen my pants?"

Cat emerged from the bathroom, greeted by the sight of her best friend's torso dangling off her bed. The bed hangings had been opened haphazardly, and sure enough Annabelle Bristow was clad only in an oversize Hangry Hippogriffs band tee and a pair of lacy navy-blue panties.

Despite her less-than-wonderful mood, Cat couldn't help but laugh. "Uh, no. Sorry Annie."

The blonde just groaned and rolled back onto her bed, covering her head with a pillow.

Dahlia stuck her head out of her bed curtains, her brown hair sticking up in all sorts of directions. "Check the windowsill, maybe!"

Annie lifted the pillow off her head and attempted to stand up. She tripped slightly over the edge of her covers, but caught her balance by grabbing hold of the end table.

Cecily chose that moment to finally materialize from her four-poster. "Don't look at me," she barked, shielding her face with her hand as she made her way to the bathroom.

"Hey, I found them!" Annie, having made her way over to the windowsill. She held up the pair of faded jeans up triumphantly like they were the Quidditch Cup. "Thanks, Dahlia. You're a doll."

She was just beginning to put them on when Dahlia cut in again. "You're welcome. But you do know you can't wear them to class, right?"

Annie's face fell. "I fucking hate wearing a skirt," she proclaimed loudly.

"Well, I fucking hate how loud you all are in the mornings, but I'm not whining about it!" Cecily's voice rang out from the bathroom, where she was no doubt beginning the hour-long process of looking presentable.

Annie may have been hungover, but she wasn't about the let the irony of Cecily's comment escape. "You ARE whining about it, Warrington. Why don't you shut up and apply some more make-up so you look less like a troll!"

"Oh, fuck off, Annabelle!"

"I would if I could! Now let me in the bathroom!"

Annie started pounding her small fists on the bathroom door. Dahlia simply closed her bed's drapes in an attempt to block out the noise of the quarreling blondes. Cat figured it was her cue to leave.

"Breakfast ends in twenty minutes!" she called out as she headed out the door.

* * *

A letter was waiting for Cat as soon as she settled onto a spot on the bench next to Scorpius. "I got you a present," he said, wiggling his eyebrows in a way Cat found rather disturbing.

"If that letter is already from my mother you better have gotten me a gift receipt," Cat retorted sharply. By Circe, she had just escaped that woman yesterday!

Scorpius just shrugged. "Sorry, Cat."

Cat groaned, letting her head fall onto Scorpius's shoulder. Gingerly, she poked the pink envelope with her wand as if it might explode. Scorpius handed her a tall glass of pumpkin juice, which she drank quickly before finally reaching for the blasted letter.

"Better now than later," she muttered to herself as she broke the seal on the envelope. The stationery inside was the same awful shade of pink as the outside envelope, forcing Cat to do a double take before reading.

 _Dearest Catalina,_

 _I miss you already, darling. You dashed off before we could finish our discussion at the Platform yesterday! It was quite an important conversation—I do hope you won't repeat that sort of behavior in the future. Your coming-of-age party is a very important manner, and I won't have you shirking your responsibilities._

 _I've been contemplating several different choices for the venue. Your father thinks that renting out the Atrium of the Ministry would be too much, but just think how our purple-and-silver color scheme would complement the antique chandeliers that hang over the ballroom. Of course, the Water's Edge Hotel is also known for hosting these types of events, I'm just not sure we want to do something so obvious. I also suppose we could have it at Theodora's, or even our own home, but I just feel there's something a bit plebian about hosting a coming-of-age ball at one's own abode. Do let me know your thoughts on the matter._

 _Speaking of your grandmother Theodora, she was a bit disappointed to hear that you were still without a boyfriend at the dinner party. I understand being a bit choosy: us Hyde women have high standards, after all, and some of those Hogwarts boys leave much to be desired._

 _Has nothing developed between you and Scorpius? He'd be a fine match. The Malfoy's are very respected in England, and for a man of very fair complexion, he's quite handsome. Perhaps your current friendship stands in the way of a possible relationship. Just something to consider._

 _I also couldn't help but notice the good-looking boy who helped you with your trunk at the Platform. You may have already dismissed your old mum, but she was still paying attention! I had to ask around for his identity, but Pansy Baddock informed me that it was the eldest Clarke boy who came to your aide. Though their pedigree is not quite as extensive as the Malfoy's, the Clarke's are still a well-respected pureblood family. You could do much worse, Catalina. I know your Prefect position keeps you busy, but don't be afraid to make some time for a boyfriend!_

 _Your father sends his love. Please keep an eye on Matty for me, you know how he tends to get into those occasional scrapes of mischief._

 _All my love,_

 _Natalia_

Cat sighed, and debated going back to bed. All of her mother's letters seemed to have a similarly exhausting effect.

"That bad, huh?"

"I thought it was bad when she started out debating possible ball venues, but it got worse. She started discussing potential boyfriends."

Scorpius waggled his eyebrows once more. "Did I make the list?"

"Of course. You were at the top. I swear the woman loves you more than I do."

"I knew you loved me, Kitty!"

"Shut up, Scor. Mum might've been singing your praises, but she also mentioned your unnatural pastiness."

He clutched his hand to his heart as if she had really hurt him. "But Natalia told me my porcelain skin resembles an angel descending down from heaven! I thought she really cared for me!"

Cat chuckled, unable to maintain a straight face. "Oh, knock it off. You know mum would never say a bad word about you. I believe she referred to you as having a 'fair complexion' anyway, so stop worrying."

Scorpius shot her a dirty look anyway. Cat ignored it and began buttering piece of toast.

She had moved on from the toast to a plate of eggs by the time her bedraggled roommates made it to the breakfast table. Well, Dahlia and Annie appeared a bit worse for wear. Cecily, on the other hand, knew her way around a beauty charm and looked more or less immaculate. Her long blonde hair was perfectly curled and her face makeup applied so as to hide the bags under her eyes from the late night. Her skirt and tie were both perfectly pressed as well. Cat scrutinized her for any sign of a hangover and couldn't find anything wrong until she pushed her hair behind her ears.

"Is wearing two different earrings the new style now?" she teased, knowing Cecily would be annoyed if no one informed her of the minuscule snafu in her otherwise perfect appearance.

Cecily's glossed lips turned into a frown. "Damn it!" She stood up from the bench. "I've got to go change. I'll see you all in class."

"They're just earrings!" Annie chimed in. She gave Cecily a look, but reached to her own earlobes and began removing her own earrings. "but hey, if it means that much to you, you can wear mine. Here, give me yours. I look a mess anyway."

"Oh, thank Merlin!" Cecily gushed, sliding back into her seat next to the petite blonde and giving her a side-hug. "Annie, have I told you lately how much I love you?"

Annie stopped pretending to grumble and beamed. "Never hurts to hear it again!" she exclaimed.

Cat refrained from reminding the pair that they had been hurling expletives at each other only a half-hour ago. Instead, she settled for a small smile at her three best friends and passed them the plate of muffins.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Did you like Cat's friends? Her never-ending banter with Scorpius? What about the fact that Albus has a girlfriend?

I'm sorry but I don't have any real excuses for the delay in chapter 2. Hopefully I'll be more consistent in my writing from here on out. I also apologize for the filler-ness of this chapter, but if you look closely you may find some sentences that resemble the beginnings of a plot. Also, this is un-beta'd, so feel free to point out any errors I might have missed.

If you don't mind, let me know your thoughts on this chapter down below. I appreciate it :)


	3. The One Where Cat Gets Tied Up

**There's Something About Albus  
** by sweaterweather21

* * *

 **Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

 **Last Chapter:** Cat helped to save a first-year from the Great Lake and survived Back-to-School Girl's Night with Annie, Cecily, and Dahlia.

* * *

Chapter 3: The One Where Cat Gets Tied Up

 _Sick of all these people talking, sick of all this noise  
Sick of all these cameras flashing, sick of being poised_

Castle - Halsey

* * *

The first week of the school year passed without event. Cat's professors were business as usual, and her friends had managed to remain hangover-free for their classes since that disastrous first day in which Annie fell asleep in all of her classes and Dahlia narrowly avoided puking during Transfiguration. Even Scorpius had stopped complaining about patrols, which was a minor miracle in itself for the lazy Slytherin.

It wasn't until her free period Friday morning until Cat felt energized enough to reply to her mother's letter. Though the temptation to simply ignore it was strong, she knew failing to reply promptly would only encourage her mother to send another barrage of those bloody pink envelopes.

Tucked away in her favorite corner of the library and partially hidden behind a stack of books Madam Pince had yet to shelve, Cat opened her book bag and pulled out a piece of parchment, her favorite quill, and a pot of blue ink.

Her ancient wooden table was located in the History of Magic section, quite a distance from the main tables and surrounded by such dull tomes that students rarely ventured over. However, Cat found the solitude productive, and superior to her dormitory, which was usually occupied by her very chatty best friends and to the Slytherin Common Room, with its limited tables that tended to fill up very quickly. Occasionally she _did_ feel like a bit of a recluse tucked away in this particular alcove of the library, but hermitage was a sacrifice she was willing to make if it meant she could get some work done.

With a heaving sigh, Cat picked up her quill.

 _Dear Mother,_

 _I apologize for cutting our conversation off short the other day. I was merely startled by the train whistle and thought I should attempt to board before it took off. Rest assured, I would never dream of shirking my responsibilities._

 _As much as I appreciate your research into a variety of different venue options for my party, I think I prefer the idea of hosting it ourselves. The Ministry's Atrium and the Water's Edge Hotel are both lovely locations, but I like the flexibility of hosting it at the manor. I'd never want to inconvenience Grandmother, either, but tell her thanks for offering._

 _Speaking of Grandmother, I'm sorry to disappoint her with my lack of a romance. The beginning of the school year is a very busy time, especially with my additional duties as Prefect, and I've found myself far too busy to even think possible relationships. Scorpius and I are just friends, as I've reminded you in the past, as is Tanner Clarke. Unfortunately, Mrs. Baddock must have misconstrued our interaction as something other than completely platonic._

 _Matty sends his love as well. He's been keeping out of trouble since term started – no detentions yet!_

 _Please tell Father I say hello._

 _Love,_

 _Catalina_

Though she knew the Envelope-Sealing charm, Cat chose to enclose her letter the muggle way. Licking the envelope, despite its bitter taste, gave the whole letter-writing process a certain air of finality Cat needed after dealing with her mother. The woman was several hundred miles away, but still managed to make Cat feel exasperated. It was lucky that Cat's faint sarcasm was undetectable to her mother in correspondence, because she found writing a completely serious response to the never-ending list of inquiries an impossible task.

At least she had mastered the strategy of revealing as little of the actual truth as possible back in first year. To be honest, Cat didn't give a damn about the location of her absurd coming-of-age party, but hoped that choosing the smallest venue from the list would affect the size of the guest list, and hopefully limit the damage that this party could cause. The bit about Matty was an outright lie as well, or at least quite a stretch of the truth. He had certainly not "sent his love" and though he had managed to stay out of detention, Cat was pretty sure he had already lost at least thirty house points for refusing to wear his uniform tie and for using magic in the corridors.

Sadly, the only _completely_ truthful part of the letter was her lack of a boyfriend.

Refusing to give that train of thought any more momentum, Cat glanced at her watch and realized she only had ten minutes to get to Charms class. Gathering up her books and quills, she shoved them in her bag hastily and dashed out of the library.

Cat made it to her favorite class mere seconds before it began. Although she wasn't late, she now faced another dilemma: where to sit. Charms wasn't a particularly difficult subject to take at the NEWT level, so most of the desks were occupied. Cat's friends were already paired up as well, making her decision even more difficult – Annie with Sam Eubanks, her boyfriend, Dahlia with Cecily, and Scorpius with Tanner.

Grumbling to herself, Cat settled into a desk in the back of the room. She usually preferred the front, as she needed her glasses to see from a distance. As she reached into her bag for her glasses case, she accidentally bumped into the boy in the chair next to her, who was deep in conversation with his other friends seated in the back.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she mumbled distractedly as she opened the case, sliding a dark pair of frames over her nose.

"Hey, don't worry about it," a familiar voice replied.

Cat didn't need the lenses correcting her vision to recognize the boy who had turned around to face her.

"Oh! Sorry, Benjamin – I didn't know you were in this class!" Cat flushed a bit at the sudden proximity of the cute Ravenclaw prefect.

"Well, you probably couldn't recognize me all dried off like this. I'm usually dripping wet after saving first years from the lake."

Cat laughed loudly at this, which earned herself a look from Professor Flitwick, who had just cleared his throat in an attempt to start class. Annie had also managed to tear her gaze away from her boyfriend for a moment, turning around and raising her eyebrows at Cat, communicating an awful lot via a single facial expression.

Cat bit her lip and looked away, hoping that Benjamin hadn't seen. Thankfully, when she turned around a second later, he seemed busy writing the date on the top corner of his notes.

For the next thirty minutes, Cat tried to focus on taking notes of Flitwick's lecture. Although she had top marks in Charms in her year, she was finding this task easier said than done. For one, Flitwick was lecturing about unbreakable charms, a concept that Cat had already read about and could perform in her sleep. The proximity of Benjamin Goldstein also made paying attention more difficult, as Cat found herself distracted by his pleasant cologne and his very organized notes.

She never knew nice handwriting could be such a turn-on.

It was only when Flitwick transitioned into possible applications of unbreakable charms that Cat's ears perked up. He mentioned that while charms were typically administered to everyday tools and utensils, their real potential was largely unrealized. Even as other students around her dozed off, Cat was entranced when Flitwick began extrapolating about applying the theory of unbreakable charms to other disciplines, such as increasing the structural soundness of building foundations or creating shatter-resistant protective gear for Aurors. Her imagination captured, she began scribbling furiously in the margins about what some of these spells might look like.

So distracted was Cat in her theorizing, she barely noticed when Flitwick stopped talking. It was only when Benjamin Goldstein gently tugged on her sleeve that she looked up from her messy notes.

"So, do you want to get started?"

Cat frowned in confusion as she pushed some stray pieces of hair behind her ear.

"Start what?"

"Flitwick wants us to write a summary of lecture today. He said we can work with partners, but if you want to find someone else…" he trailed off uncertainly.

"Oh, no! I'd love to work with you – here, I can write for us!" Cat exclaimed, hoping she didn't sound _too_ eager.

"Sounds good," Benjamin acquiesced, and began relaying concepts from his notes for her to write down.

Cat quickly found out that Benjamin hadn't been sorted in Ravenclaw and named Prefect for nothing. He was an excellent partner, quick to extract the main points from his notes and to help Cat summarize them. They finished just as class was ending, while several of their less-efficient classmates were forced to finish the summary as additional homework.

"Hey, I didn't know you wore glasses," Benjamin commented just as they both started packing up.

"Ugh, I wish I didn't have to!" Cat scoffed. "It's just when I sit in the back, it's a bit difficult to see the board so I'm stuck with these ugly things," she finished, gesturing to her frames as she internally chided herself for babbling so much.

"If it makes you feel better, I think they look nice on you."

"Uh, thanks," she managed stupidly. A slightly awkward pause ensued. Eager to end the conversational drought, she glanced around the room for inspiration, her eyes landing on his notebook.

"Anyway, I was going to tell you earlier that you have excellent handwriting – for a boy, especially. Your notes are practically like a work of art! You don't see too many people who can write like that. Just look at my notebook – it's a wreck, even though I try to stay—"

As Cat grew more aware of the brilliant shade of red her cheeks were turning, she shut up. Why on earth had she decided to compliment the very attractive Ravenclaw on his handwriting, of all things? Merlin, she was such an imbecile when it came to talking to cute boys.

At least Benjamin didn't seem to be too disturbed by her bizarre compliment. He chuckled nervously for a moment before replying.

"I've never heard that one before, but thanks." He grabbed his notebook off the desk. "Oh, do you want me to hand our summary in now, since we finished?

Cat was slightly less flustered now that Benjamin hadn't decided to run for the hills after experiencing a full dose her awful attempt at flirting. She smiled quickly before she responded.

"Oh, don't worry about it. I've got it!"

"You're sure?"

"Yeah, totally!"

"Okay, see you around, Zabini."

Cat smiled again awkwardly as he walked off. Still lost in her thoughts, she drifted toward the front of the room and handed Flitwick the parchment from her desk before practically colliding with Annie, who was waiting by the door. Her blonde best friend had obviously witnessed her interaction with Benjamin, and was no doubt waiting for Cat to deliver the details.

"Where's Sam?" Cat asked, confused by the absence of Annie's Hufflepuff boyfriend.

Annie waved her hand dismissively.

"I sent him off to lunch early with his friends. Now fill me in about your Charms partner! He seems too hot to be a prefect, honestly…"

Cat busied herself by tying her hair up into a ponytail, using a spare ribbon she found in her bag. "Well, I was almost late to class and the only spot open was in the back, next to him," she began slowly.

Evidently Cat's storytelling pace wasn't fast enough for her best friend, because Annie slapped her lightly on the arm.

"No shit, warlock. I saw you come in. I want to know what you talked about! Now _spill_!"

* * *

By the time Cat and Annie sat down at the Slytherin table for lunch, Cat had relayed every single embarrassing syllable that had come out of her mouth during her interaction with Benjamin. For the most part, Annie had been a sympathetic listener, although she had cringed slightly when Cat admitted she had complimented him on his handwriting.

"I'd say you're hopeless, Cat, but at least he said thank you," Annie chattered on, her food left abandoned on her plate as she busied herself analyzing her friend's attempt at talking to the cute Ravenclaw prefect. "And he ended with 'see you around,' implying that he wouldn't mind if you two happen to run into each other again. I mean, I wouldn't go around complimenting all the cute boys you know on their handwriting, but in this case, it might have worked for you. You sort of have that whole endearing thing going on, anyway… maybe he thought it was cute? Boys are sometimes—"

Cat cut her off, a slight frown etched across her face. "Endearing, really?"

"Cat?" a new voice questioned, entering the conversation. "Oh, fuck no."

Matteo, the source of the interruption, slid into the empty seat next to Cat. She frowned, but he continued anyway.

"Sis, you stopped being endearing after the first time you got into the bathtub with your socks still on."

"There was a second time?" Annie asked, amused.

"There were _multiple_ times."

Cat groaned and attempted to defend herself. "You know, it's actually pretty easy to forget you're wearing socks!"

In response, Annie snorted. "Uh, no actually, it's not."

Matteo leaned across the table to give her a high-five, united in their harassment of Cat.

"Okay, in my defense, I was still young and getting a bath was still pretty exciting!"

"Cat, you were ten," her brother retaliated.

As Annie began laughing so hard she nearly choked, Cat fixed her brother with a glare.

"I was not!"

Matteo gave her a knowing look.

"Whatever," Cat conceded. "At least I wasn't banned from having playdates with Sabine Urquhart because I kept trying to kiss her."

"What can I say? I'm a ladies' man, always have been." Completely unashamed, Matteo simply shrugged off Cat's rebuttal with large smirk. "I bet if I tried that stunt with Sabine again, she'd be into it."

Cat grimaced, but Matteo continued anyway.

"Hey, nothing wrong with it. At least I've had some success with the opposite gender since then. More than you can say!"

Cat noticed Annie nodding in agreement, so she reached across the table to flick her in the forehead even as she started protesting. "That's unfair! I've had success with the opposite gender!"

Annie gave her a dubious look. "You know," she drawled, pointing at Cat with her unused salad fork, "your encounter with Benjamin today tells quite a different story."

Matteo laughed and exchanged a high-five with Annie for the second time in their conversation.

"Whatever happened to me being endearing?" Cat piped up with a fake pout.

"Maybe you should settle for mostly awkward and occasionally not repulsive," Matteo retorted without missing a beat. He continued to scoop mashed potatoes onto his plate until it resembled a mountain.

Cat elbowed him in arm so hard that he dropped the serving spoon on the ground. "Well, what about you, Romeo? You're still single, unless there's someone I should write mum about."

"Silly Cat. Just because I'm currently without a girlfriend doesn't mean the ladies don't love me. I'm just weighing my options here."

Cat rolled her eyes. "The ladies do not 'love you,' Matty. You're fourteen. Do you even weigh 50 kilos yet?"

"Do _you_ even weigh 50 kilos yet?"

Cat scoffed. "Of course I do. I just didn't think the Quidditch team allowed shrimps to play for them."

"Hey! The Seeker is supposed to have a light build!"

With a doubtful glance, Cat eyed the huge mound of food that now covered the plate in front of her brother.

"Not for long."

Matteo made a rude gesture toward his sister that she pretended not to see, and purposefully ladled an excess amount of gravy on top of his potaotes.

"So, how is the Quidditch team looking this year?" Annie piped up. "I'd ask Scorpius, but he's still pissed that Azalea Baddock got captain over him."

"Oh, Scorp should be fine. Baddock's a seventh year, so he's a lock-in for next year. He'll get over it as soon as we as we trounce Gryffindor in our first match. Baddock may be a complete bitch, but she's a damn good captain. She's been working our arses off in practice–laps on top of laps, honestly—so I highly doubt those bloody lions will be able to keep up with us."

"Merlin, Matty!" Cat scolded. "You sound worse than a banshee with all that cursing!"

Matteo ignored her. "What was I saying? Oh yeah, plus Baddock was working with Scorp and Lily on a new Chasing formation that'll hopefully really confuse Wood. Bloke doesn't have too many brain cells up there to begin with, anyway. Not to mention my dives have really tightened up recently. I've shaved off a full second on my diagonal between the hoops and I reckon my turns have been sharper as well."

"You're still going to have to catch the snitch before Albus Potter," Cat pointed out, still peeved at being ignored by her little brother and eager to get a reaction out of him.

It worked.

"You'd take Potter over your own brother?" Matteo asked incredulously, straightening up in his bench seat and swiveling his gaze to glare directly at his sister.

"I'm just saying he's caught the Snitch the last ten games in a row," Cat retorted. "I'm pretty sure that's a school record."

Matteo frowned. "Since when do you know shit about Quidditch?"

"Since I've been to every single game since you made the team last year!"

"That still doesn't explain how you know so much about Albus Potter!"

Hastily, Annie cut into their conversation. "Look, I hate to break this up, but Matty, you'd have to be a hermit to miss Potter breaking the school record. And Cat, you could probably stand to have a little more Slytherin pride."

"Sorry," Cat deadpanned, satisfied now that she had finally gotten a reaction out of Matty. "Go snakes."

"That's what I like to hear!" Annie exclaimed, happy with herself for diffusing the argument. "Although, Matty, I have to admit you'll have your work cut out for you against Gryffindor. I can't wait to watch—seems like it'll be an intense game."

"They're definitely our toughest competition," Matteo admitted. "Ravenclaw may have won the Cup last year, but rumor is James Potter's had his team training with a vengeance."

He pushed the remnants of his potatoes around his plate around a bit, looking deep in thought. He only perked up when a trio of glossy-haired Slytherin fourth-year girls approached.

One in particular, a curly-haired brunette with a lot of eye-makeup caught Matteo's attention as she strolled by.

"Hi Matteo."

Cat watched as her brother's face quickly transformed to reflect his interest in the speaker.

"Sabine," he nodded, gazing up in her direction. The brunette in question gave Matteo one last flirty smile before sitting down further down on the bench.

He waited a few seconds before turning back to his sister with a prideful smirk plastered across his face. "All I'm saying is that she doesn't seem too repulsed by me now, does she?"

"She would be if she had any common sense," Cat snapped back. "And really, what's with the head nod? I thought you were smoother than that."

"Hey, it works!" Matteo inclined his head slightly toward Sabine, who was not-so-surreptitiously twirling her hair around her index finger as she occasionally glanced toward their section of the table.

"Better make sure that condom works, too. Don't want to get her pregnant!" Annie chimed in with a laugh. Cat spluttered at the horrendous thought, but Annie began tugging her away before she could manage a response.

"Time to go, Cat! We've got Double Defense today, and we're dueling! See you around, Matty!"

Matty waved goodbye cheekily as Cat was forcibly dragged from the Great Hall by her best friend. She did her best to glare at the both of them as she left, unsure of who was more deserving of her displeasure.

* * *

As always, Annie quickly managed to wriggle her way back into Cat's good graces. The two of them were giggling like third-years on Cheering Charms by the time they reached the Defense Against the Dark Arts Classroom, where they found spots near the front of the room and continued chattering. Annie had been regaling a story about a conversation with her boyfriend that almost had Cat in hysterics.

"… and then I told Sam, just because your Patronus is big, it doesn't mean you have a big…"

"Miss Bristow," the deep, booming voice of their Defense professor interrupted, "I'd like to begin class now, if you don't mind."

Surprisingly, Annie managed not to blush, though Cat turned red enough for the both of them.

"No, go ahead, Professor." Annie at least had enough decency to look down as she replied to Professor Tsabala, a tall, dark-skinned fellow who more closely resembled a mountain than a man.

"Thank you, Miss Bristow."

Professor Tsabalala moved toward the large blackboard at the front of the room, and in all capital letters, scrawled two words in white chalk: WIZARD'S DUEL. This was accompanied by such an austere stare that Cat found herself gulping despite her previous excitement for the day's lesson plan. Next to her, Annie had reverted to her childhood nervous habit of biting her nails.

"I want you all to take this process seriously today. Dueling is no laughing matter. Many men and women with ten times your skill and stamina have perished at the end of a duel. Unlike your mothers and fathers, we are lucky in that dueling is not a necessity in our everyday lives. Therefore, I request that you all respect the process and follow the rules to have a productive class. Are you all in agreement?"

He paused for a moment before the class responded, more or less in unison, with a resounding, "Yes, sir!"

Striding to the front of his desk, Tsabalala smiled for the first time since class had begun. "Excellent. Now, these duels are only for me to get a sense of your skill level, as well as a bit of excitement before what is sure to be a less exciting unit covering defensive spells, so don't go crazy and go for the jugular. The rules are as follows: no curses with the potential to draw blood, no summoning of dangerous creatures and/or spirits, and absolutely no Unforgivables. I assume you are all bright enough to adhere to these rules, but I am obligated to inform you that you risk expulsion and a sentence in Azkaban if you attempt any one of the Unforgivables. I will be pairing you off and the duels will proceed one at a time on the platform to the side of the room. I have cast the necessary enchantments so all spells will remain within the designated arena, and I expect this to go smoothly. If not, Healer Pomfrey is on call in the Hospital Wing."

There were a few titters, but Professor Tsabalala quickly silenced them.

"I am not joking."

The class promptly shut up, and Cat was quickly reminded of the rumors that flew around the school about their Defense Professor. Back in first year, she had heard some of the older Slytherins gossiping that Tsabalala had been a former Auror for the South African Ministry of Magic, and had been forced to duel his own uncle, an aspiring Dark Lord, to the death.

Cat doubted the veracity of those rumors, but she had to admit the large South African professor still commanded a lot of respect.

Contradicting his previous statement, Tsabalala suddenly broke out into a smile. The class shifted uncomfortably, not sure what to think.

"I am looking forward to the duels today. Depending on the duelists' skill level, it can be a highly entertaining event. Of course, it is still an ancient tradition, with many rituals that should be followed. Remember the proper dueling etiquette we've gone over in the past classes, but that being said, don't be afraid to get creative with your spells and maneuvers. Besides increasing your chances of victory, creativity makes for a far more interesting duel for the rest of us to enjoy! And to all of you, good luck."

Cat was inexplicably excited to duel. She was an excellent Defense student, and even Tsabalala's warnings couldn't prevent the anticipation she felt creeping into her bones. She didn't have any real reason to be confident in her abilities, having never dueled before, but she did like to compete occasionally, much to the shame of her mother. It didn't hurt that this sort of activity seemed exactly like something Natalia Zabini would hate for Cat to partake in.

It was only too bad she wasn't called first. That honor went to Lucy Weasley and Connor Hepburn, a stocky Gryffindor boy.

She watched curiously as the two opponents made their way to the raised platform. Interestingly enough, it seemed that Hepburn, despite his supposed Gryffindor courage, was by far the more nervous of the two. Cat didn't need to put her glasses on to tell that his wand was shaking between his fingers. On the other hand, Lucy was as cavalier as always, her wand still in her pocket as she patiently waited for Tsabalala to announce the start of the duel.

It turned out that Hepburn was right to be nervous. It took Lucy less than a minute to break through his Shield Charm with a barrage of jinxes that grew more creative every time. She went on the offensive instantly, starting with a basic _Petrificus Totalus_ , progressing to a Jelly-Legs Jinx and a series of charms that Cat recognized as Hair Color Charms. Evidently Hepburn had never tried dyeing his hair, as he didn't realize the harmless nature of Lucy's spells. He pushed a lot of energy into his Shield Charm to deflect them, which gave Lucy an opportunity to take him down with a simple Tripping Jinx. She then Summoned his wand and did a quick little curtsy to the applause of the class before stepping off the platform cheerfully. Even Tsabalala awarded Lucy a rare smile as she handed Hepburn back his wand. For his part, the Gryffindor accepted his defeat at the hands of a petite redhead humbly, although Cat did catch him grumbling to his mates afterward.

Rose Weasley was up next. Despite the differences between the two cousins, they were alike in that they both decimated their opponents. Cat watched, enraptured, as Rose showed no mercy on Lilia Stevenson, a pretty Hufflepuff with not much else going for her beside her looks.

"I hate that bitch," Annie commented, her tone mild despite her scathing words.

"Who? Rose?" Cat asked as she looked up from the duel, thoroughly confused. Granted, Rose was notorious for her competitive streak and did seem a little peeved at drawing Lilia as a partner but the redhead hadn't really done anything to deserve such criticism. And that was coming from Cat, who didn't particularly like her in the first place.

"Ugh, no," Annie scoffed. "Lilia."

Cat wracked her brains, trying to remember if the two girls had ever had any beef. She was _pretty_ sure that it had been one of Cecily's ex-boyfriends that had rebounded with Lilia, not one of Annie's. Merlin, she couldn't forget those terrible boils that had scarred Lilia's face for weeks afterward. That was definitely Cecily's work. She had no idea why Annie wasn't a fan of the blonde Hufflepuff.

"I give up," she said, finally exasperated. "Why?"

"Defense class. Third year. Don't you remember?"

"No." Cat's tone was flat.

"She faked a fainting spell after the lesson about Dementors just so Teddy would have to halt class and carry her to the Hospital Wing! It was such an obvious ploy for attention! She looked so desperate, honestly, I'll never forget it…" Annie trailed off, still shooting daggers at the Lilia.

Cat rolled her eyes. Despite her the presence of Sam Eubanks in Annie's life, her crush on the young Transfiguration professor had hardly diminished. "Since when have you been on a first name basis with _Professor Lupin?_ "

Annie flat-out ignored her question so Cat resumed watching the duels. Lilia had finally stopped sniffling after losing to Rose, and Tanner was in the middle of a close match-up with Minnie Longbotton. He won on a lucky off-target hex that deflected off the window pane and struck the feisty Gryffindor witch in the chest.

Talia Boot was called next, paired with Cheyenne Thomas. Cat wasn't sure what it was exactly that inclined her to cheer against Albus's girlfriend in favor of the dark-skinned Ravenclaw girl. Nevertheless, she felt faintly disappointed when Talia outlasted her after 10 minutes in what had been the most evenly-skilled duel of the class so far.

Cat was temporarily distracted by the celebratory hug Talia shared with Albus afterward and didn't notice Annie being called up. Her opponent was Julian Dempsey, a Chaser on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. He had about a foot on Annie in terms of height and a better grasp on defensive magic to boot. Nevertheless, Cat watched proudly as her best friend fought back with her characteristic feistiness. Defense had never been Annie's strongest subject, but her determination had gotten her through the O.W.L., and it was powering her through the duel as well.

Annie was clearly on the defensive, resorting to scampering around the platform to avoid Dempsey's spells. Paired with her already petite frame, she was a difficult target to hit. Although Cat could tell she was wearing out, she had hope yet.

Just when Cat thought Annie had finally managed to land a Leg-Locker Curse on Dempsey, he countered with a series of hexes that forced her to retreat to the back wall, which he used to his advantage. Annie succumbed to his Sticking Charm and found herself plastered against the hard stone, unable to move and in a terrible defensive position. Her Shield Charm faltered a few spells later and she lost her wand.

Annie wriggled for a few moments uncomfortably before Tsabalala cast the counter-charm. Dempsey walked across the platform to return Annie's wand, which she accepted gracefully after she straightened her rumpled skirt.

Annie was still smiling sweetly as she sat down next to Cat.

"Taking that loss like a champ, I see," Cat commented, slightly surprised to see her friend in such good spirits after losing a duel.

Annie's smile took a turn for the mischievous as she raised her eyes conspiratorially, making sure no one was looking. "On the contrary," she responded, "I'm just working out how to sneak laxatives in his breakfast tomorrow."

Unable to discern whether Annie was kidding or not, Cat glanced over at the tall Ravenclaw Chaser warily. She shook her head, wondering if the poor boy would make it to class tomorrow. "Sometimes I wonder if you're _too_ evil for Slytherin, Ann."

"No such thing." Annie shook her head dismissively. Cat snorted.

Scorpius was announced to duel next, cutting off their conversation. While outwardly, he appeared as nonchalant as ever, Cat could tell he was pleased with his selected opponent: Jacqueline Bonnacord, a very beautiful and and very _friendly_ Ravenclaw who just happened to be part-Veela.

It was apparent to Cat early on that Jacqueline was no match for Scorpius in terms of magic or dueling skill, though Cat was puzzled where exactly Scorpius had picked up his dueling technique.

For whatever reason, Scorpius seemed to prolonging the duel intentionally, and he moved almost lazily across the platform. Cat suspected his use of a few water-based spells was intended to soak through Jacqueline's white blouse. After a few of those spells landed, he ended the duel abruptly with an overpowered Summoning Charm. Caught off-guard, her wand flew right into Scorpius's outstretched palm.

Tsabalala nodded in approval as Scorp sauntered over to Jacqueline to return her wand. One of her friends lent her a sweater to cover up her damp blouse, but that didn't stop Scorpius from flirting with the blonde Ravenclaw for the rest of class.

A few more duels passed quickly and uneventfully. Annie kept up a running commentary that occasionally had Cat in peals of laughter. The only duel that really drew Cat's attention was that of Benjamin and Dougie Macmillan, a Hufflepuff. While Cat definitely admired the quiet confidence her Charms partner displayed on the platform, she grew worried by Dougie's increasing frustration. He was a big guy, and not particularly known for being able to restrain his temper. It culminated with Dougie dropping his wand and attempting to settle things the muggle way. Luckily, Benjamin was quick on his feet, and managed a Stunner before Dougie's fist connected with his own well-structured jaw.

Now that would have been a shame.

Still caught up in her musings about Benjamin's fantastic jawline and distracted by the Hufflepuffs who were doing their best to calm Dougie down, Cat almost didn't hear her own name being called. She blinked a few times before Annie poked her in the side.

"You're up, champ!"

Recalling Tsabalala mentioning that flowy robes were a hindrance in a duel, Cat removed hers before stepping up to the platform, clad only in a short-sleeved blouse and her uniform skirt. Her attention momentarily shifted to the side of the room, where Benjamin was now shaking hands with an apologetic Dougie.

It wasn't until she found herself standing on the white 'X' denoting the starting position that Cat realized she needed to get it together. Here she was, still thinking about a cute Ravenclaw prefect when she was about to begin dueling.

She looked up suddenly, and almost groaned.

Speak of the devil and cute prefects. Of course her opponent was Albus _bloody_ Potter.

He smiled at her, and even the combination of her exposed arms and the chilly Defense classroom couldn't prevent the flush of warmth that surged through her. He bent down in a bow, and she did the same, her heart beating at a pace she couldn't entirely attribute to anticipation of the duel.

Damn that messy hair and those green eyes. Looking that attractive was an unfair advantage.

Cat didn't have too much time to mull over it, though, because the duel commenced, and she immediately found herself scrambling to keep up.

Apparently Albus smiling at her hadn't meant he was about to take it easy. He led with some basic, but powerful jinxes, each cast at a slightly different angle, making it difficult for her dodge them all. Cat grimaced as she was forced to expend quite a bit of energy on a large Shield Charm just so she could avoid getting hit. With only the blue iridescence of her quickly-fading charm between them, Cat allowed herself one deep breath and a last-minute pep talk. This was a duel, the real thing. She needed to get her hormones in check. After all, she hadn't received an O on her Defense O.W.L. for nothing. She could do this.

Finally, she dropped her shield and prepared to cast her first bit of offensive magic, but was beaten by Albus, who was already sending more spells her way. A few were deflected by the quickly-disappearing fragments of her Shield Charm, but Cat was forced to take a few more steps in retreat. She managed to send a slightly off-kilter Tripping Jinx his way, but Albus batted it away with ease and continued his onslaught.

Cat gritted her teeth as she fought to not give up any more ground. She could feel the adrenaline swishing through her veins now as she parried Albus's hexes. He was casting at an incredible rate, one that she couldn't keep up with. Though she matched some of his spells with a few of her own, she was forced to dodge the rest. Her breath came in pants now, and Cat realized that if she didn't land a spell soon, the duel would be over before it even started.

Unfortunately, her use of energy-consuming shield charms and defensive magic left her offensive spells a slightly under-powered. Forced to think on her feet for a way she could still catch Albus off-guard, she dug deep into her repertoire for some spells he wouldn't recognize. She flung a few lesser-known hexes his way, ones Tsabalala hadn't lectured about in class. Albus moved toward the front of the platform, easily dodging everything she hurled at him, while evenly returning her fire with his own endless stream of spells. Desperate now for _something_ to hit, she cast a Slow-Mo Charm in the general direction he was moving.

Concentrated on his own offensive attack, Albus almost missed the unobtrusive pale grey charm set to collide with him as he advanced toward Cat. At the last second, though, he saw the charm and halted his motion, letting her spell fly past him harmlessly.

Frustrated with her near-miss, Cat lost focus for a moment, and was slow to recognize the red beam of light heading straight for her. Her Shield Charm was a split-second late, and Albus's Stinging Hex caught her left arm.

A small yelp escaped her throat at the pain and she glanced down to where a thin strip of her forearm burned a dangerous scarlet. Another spell from Albus whizzed above her head, bringing her mind back into the duel, but whatever advantage she had gained a few moments ago was long-gone.

Albus was still advancing along the front of the platform, so Cat kept to the back to avoid him. They were closer than ever before, and if Cat peered through the haze of magic between them, she could make out his unmistakable green eyes.

Cat was exhausted, and though their exchange of spellfire continued for a while, she hadn't managed to cast any offensive spells in what seemed like several minutes. Every jet of magic that shot of her want was aimed at stopping one of Albus's never-ending spells. She could barely keep up, and yet she still felt the tempo of the duel increasing.

Her left arm was still bothering her. Despite the irritation and pain that clouded her brain, she marveled at the variety of different-colored hexes Albus kept sending her way. If she hadn't been on the receiving end of them all, it would've been quite the sight.

Suddenly, she lost sight of Albus throughout the rainbow haze. It was intentional, she now realized—the incredible rate of spells, the variety of hues. He was in a vulnerable position as he advanced toward her, and the display of magic was meant to distract her.

It had almost worked.

If she squinted, she could make out Albus's blurry outline in spite of the haze of magic that surrounded him.

This was her only chance. She needed to make it count.

A silver beam of light ignited from Cat's wand before she even realized what she was doing. She watched as the the jet of magic suddenly sparked, splitting into two separate spells, both taking separate trajectories toward Albus.

Though Cat was a bit horrified at the repercussions of the magic she had just unleashed, she couldn't help but take a perverse bit of pride in the way Albus's green eyes widened in surprise.

There was no time to gloat, however, because Albus had a surprise of his own. A strange golden spell erupted from his wand, immediately tangling with the two silver threads of Cat's magic. The three strands hung in the air a moment, a dazzling combination of colors, as the rest of the haze around them slowly faded. Puzzled, Cat watched as neither spell overtook one another, but merely intertwined in the space between them.

Her wand arm shook, but Cat held it aloft. She had never seen anything like this pulsating _ball_ of magic of magic before, and it unnerved her.

She scrambled to release the magic from her own spell, but Albus was faster. The gold beam of magic from his own wand disappeared abruptly, replaced with another spell sent volleying back toward Cat, quicker than she could react.

 _Incarcerous._

She felt the ropes binding her to the nearest desk chair before she even realized what happened, her wand following momentarily after. The rough rope pulled at her skin uncomfortably, but the sensation paled in comparison to her overwhelming embarrassment.

Her mother had always told her that competitiveness was unseemly trait for a pureblood girl, but until now she hadn't found a reason to believe her.

She was stuck for what felt like minutes, but was probably only a few seconds in total. Tied to a chair, she was all-too aware of her blotchy cheeks and the dark wisps of hair falling out of her ponytail. She was anxious to wipe the sweat from her brow, but her arms were still confined to her sides. Cat sensed Albus approaching and looked away as he cast the counter-hex, refusing to meet his eyes even after the ropes disintegrated and he handed her wand back.

She heard his breath hitch right before she was about to step down from the platform. Her eyes flicked towards his own uncontrollably. They were met with an apologetic expression as he glanced toward her arms, which having been exposed, were now covered with some vicious rope burns, accompanied by a still-flaming strip of skin on her left forearm.

"Don't worry about it," she forced herself to speak. The cordial words felt strange on her tongue after forming spell incantations for the past few minutes. She tried to accompany these words with a smile, but she doubted her lips were even capable of stretching that way.

Unable to meet Albus's stare for even one more millisecond, she hopped down from the platform, wincing when she pushed off using her arms. Somehow, the fact that Albus felt badly about injuring her only made the whole thing even more shameful.

It would have been one thing if she had lost in a fair fight, but Albus had dominated the whole thing, culminating in her defeat even after she pulled out all the stops. Her last spell had been one of her own, the brainchild of a few weeks of independent research after one of Flitwick's lectures on Splitting Spells last year. She had managed to combine the principle of splitting magic with a few spells, the Confundus Curse in particular. Why she had decided to use the mostly-untested magic in a duel with the son of the most notable figure in the wizarding world was a mystery. She was lucky something hadn't gone terribly wrong.

A horrible mixture of self-loathing and embarrassment bubbled in the pit of her stomach as she sat down in an empty desk in the back of the classroom. She made sure to keep a straight face, leaving the rest of her classmates oblivious to her inner turmoil.

It was stupid to let losing a duel affect her like this. She consoled herself with the fact that at least she hadn't burst out into tears, like poor Lilia.

Annie took the seat next to her and was oddly silent for a few moments. Cat could tell she was itching to say something, but was refraining due to Cat's disappointment.

"Oh, out with it already," she muttered, sensing Annie wouldn't stop fidgeting until she said whatever it was that was eating her so much.

Annie grinned.

"At least we all known Al Potter's into bondage now, huh?" she announced. Her tone was conversational, and directed toward Cat, but she had deliberately spoken a bit too loudly.

Several students around the room burst into laughter, including Scorpius, who was chortling so heavily that Jacqueline looked a little disturbed.

Even Cat couldn't stop a small giggle from escaping. She couldn't resist sneaking a glance at Albus himself, either, and delighted in noticing that the tips of his ears had gone pink as he tried valiantly not to overhear.

"Just jesting, of course," Annie continued, and then dropped her voice an octave lower so only Cat could hear. "Honestly though, Cat. That was pretty impressive. I would've lost in ten seconds if that fine specimen of a man was my opponent. Even covered in sweat he looks damn good!"

Cat snorted, but in that moment, she was infinitely grateful for her best friend. Bad moods never lasted long with Annie around.

"He is almost unfairly attractive," Cat acknowledged.

Annie smirked in agreement, inclining her head toward where Albus stood among several of his Gryffindor friends on the opposite side of the room.

The temptation to look was too much for Cat to resist. Discreetly, she shifted her body so she could get more than just a quick glimpse of Albus. As usual, Annie's observations were spot on. His skin was still glistening with a thin sheen of sweat he had evidently worked up during their duel, making his hair stick up even further than usual. His shirtsleeves had been pushed up his forearms and he looked a bit rumpled in a way Cat thought was adorable, contrasting with his usually fairly put-together self.

Deciding she had been staring for too long, she faced forward once more to resume watching the duels. Rory Finnigan was currently taking on Christopher Montague.

"You just had to see for yourself, didn't you?"

Cat flushed. Merlin, she hated when Annie was right.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Sorry this took so long, but I hope that the length (over 7k words!) somewhat makes up for it! If you would, please take the time and let me know what you think :) I'd appreciate some input about the dueling scenes, as well as what you think of some of the characters. What was your favorite line?

Thanks again for reading!


	4. The One Where Scorpius Has a Hickey

**There's Something About Albus  
** by sweaterweather21

* * *

 **Last Chapter:** Cat forced herself to reply to her mother's letter, attempted to flirt with a cute boy, and was a bit of a sore loser.

* * *

Chapter 4: The One Where Scorpius Has a Hickey

 _I know I could lie, but I'm telling the truth  
Wherever I go, there's a shadow of you_

Wherever I Go - OneRepublic

* * *

Scorpius was the very picture of relaxation. He had fallen asleep on one of the many overstuffed couches in the Slytherin Common Room, his long limbs sprawled all over.

Cat couldn't quite relate. She had patrol with Scorpius in fifteen minutes, which would probably require waking him up, not to mention several looming deadlines: an essay on the economic effects of the first Wizarding War for History of Magic due tomorrow, at least four more runes to translate, and questions to answer about the properties of mandrakes for Herbology. There was also the upcoming test in Charms she needed to study for, only she couldn't locate her notes from last week.

In vain, she rooted through her messy book bag one more time, finding only crumpled up pieces of parchment and pieces of broken quill. Her notes should be tucked neatly in her folder with the rest of her Charms papers, but somehow the pages covering Flitwick's last lecture eluded her.

Her frustration mounting, Cat abandoned all hope of doing anything productive before leaving for patrol. Though she was all-too aware of the homework she'd have to tackle later, she chose to pull out her novel instead. If Scorpius could lay about all day and pull decent grades out of his ass, she could try to relax for a few minutes as well, at least until she'd have to wake up her lazy lug of a friend.

Unfortunately for Cat, it was always difficult to limit her reading to a few minutes. It would simply not do to pause in the middle of the chapter, and it didn't help that the plot of her mystery novel had picked up so much that Cat actually found it physically difficult to set the book down.

Of course the chapter she had been reading ended on a cliffhanger. Cat's fingers itched to keep turning the pages, and it wasn't like the prone form of Scorpius was about to put up a protest, but they were already five minutes late.

She took out a bit of her frustration on Scorpius, casting a Tickling Jinx with a bit more power than what was probably necessary. He jolted awake, his hands flying to his armpits to combat his invisible torturer.

Cat laughed out loud at the sight of him, immediately giving herself away as the culprit.

"How could you do that to me?" Scorpius whined as he stood up, vainly attempting to fix both his bedhead and his rumpled robes at the same time. "You _know_ I'm ticklish."

Cat merely shrugged, still satisfied with herself. Her previous frustrations were _mostly_ forgotten in the face of Scorpius's disheveled state. She knew her childhood best friend took quite a bit of pride in his normally immaculate appearance. Watching him squirm was fun.

He was still attempting to fix his tie as he followed Cat out of the Slytherin portrait hole. Cat offered to help, but he dismissed her with a flick of his hand.

"How were you sleeping, anyway?" Cat asked curiously. "Don't you still have that essay to write for Professor Pearson?"

Instead of answering, Scorpius merely gave her a wide-eyed look. Cat noticed his lips pressed firmly together and rolled her eyes. He was going to give her the silent treatment.

Well, two could play this game. She would wait it out. Scorpius could never keep his mouth shut for long.

She let the silence fall over them for the first ten minutes of patrol, giving him exactly what he wanted. Meanwhile, she rummaged through her brain for a conversation topic that would force Scorpius to chime in. Sometimes they discussed Quidditch, but those conversations were mostly one-sided, with Cat nodding in agreement as Scorpius complained about Albus catching the Snitch or provided an unnecessarily in-depth analysis of the Falmouth Falcon's newest trade deal. She could always fill him in on the happenings in her own life, but her mother's obsession with Cat's coming-of-age was something she really didn't want to get into either.

She wrinkled her nose. All those topics were boring, anyway. She needed something interesting, something that Scorpius wouldn't be able to resist.

The answer came to her in an instant.

Gossip.

Cat herself wasn't always completely informed on all the happenings in and around Hogwarts castle, but being close friends with Cecily Warrington had its perks. The domineering Slytherin girl was always in the know, which meant that Cat was usually privy to at least a few juicy tidbits. Thank Merlin Cecily had given her the lowdown last night, as there was a certain rumor that Cat knew would be of special interest to Scorpius.

For as much as he tried to feign disinterest, Cat knew Scorpius _thrived_ on hearing all the dirty details.

"You know, Cecily mentioned something interesting last night," Cat began innocently.

To his credit, Scorpius maintained a blank gaze forward. He, too, was well-aware of Cecily's prowess in the art of gossip-mongering, so Cat was impressed at this feat of forced nonchalance.

She decided to up the ante a bit. Scorpius was just _so_ fun to tease.

"Something interesting," she continued slowly, drawing out each syllable, "about your ex-girlfriend." She waited for a moment to let that sink in, giving Scorpius a sidelong look as they continued walking forward.

Almost imperceptibly, Scorpius twitched.

"You know," Cat drawled, sensing weakness now, "I almost didn't believe it myself, but this girl is known for not having the best judgment when it comes to men. Or boys, I should say." This was accompanied by a rather pointed stare directed at the blond.

By this point, Scorpius was humming to himself in an effort to ignore Cat. Her smirk only grew by the minute.

She increased her pace until she had a few meters on Scorpius, and then turned around, effectively cutting him off in the middle of the corridor.

"Now, I could just tell you which one of your ex-girlfriends hooked up with Stewart Pritchard at the party last weekend…"

Scorpius's eyes widened, and Cat knew she had him.

"But I think it might be more fun to make you guess," she finished.

Scorpius took a deep breath, and spoke for the first time during their patrol. "I don't care." He locked eyes with her, and then continued walking, this time at a faster pace. Cat had to turn on her heel quickly and jog a few steps to catch up.

She had to get to the bottom of this. Usually, Scorpius never had the self-control to dismiss such a blatant offering of gossip, and definitely not when it pertained to himself.

"C'mon, I know you think Pritchard is a prick. Don't you want to know who it is?" she goaded, still amazed that he hadn't yet caved.

"Eh, I've moved on."

Scorpius accompanied this declaration with a toss of his head, and it was then that Cat noticed a strange mark on his neck.

"Damn right you have!" she exclaimed giddily. "You have a hickey!"

Impulsively, Scorpius reached to adjust the collar of his robes, but Cat was quicker. She had to stretch a bit to reach his neck, but there it was: a blotchy, red mark, marring the alabaster skin a few inches above his collarbone.

"I do not!" he responded petulantly, almost child-like in the way he attempted to fix his collar one more. His eyes, however, refused to meet hers—and that's how Cat knew she had him.

"You're an embarrassment to Slytherin house with your terrible lying," she chided. "You can't feasibly deny this. The evidence speaks for itself here."

Scorpius mumbled something Cat couldn't quite make out. A smile crept up her face—she was beside herself with the opportunity to interrogate her childhood best friend. It wasn't even the presence of the hickey so much as his denial of it that made her curious. Scorpius tended to be fairly casual in his numerous relationships, and never hesitant to brag about the latest girl he had spent some quality time with in a broomstick cupboard.

"So who's the lucky lady?" she continued. "Usually, the whole school would know about her by now."

To Cat's shock, Scorpius actually flushed. Her jaw dropped, and she let out a low whistle.

When it came to girls, Scorpius was _never_ this tight-lipped. It could only mean one thing.

He cared.

Either that, or he had just snogged someone so horrendously revolting that he could never admit it to Cat. She laughed lightly to herself at the thought.

But now that she took the time to think about it, Scorpius had been acting a bit strangely lately. He had been unusually absent from several meals in the past week, and not to mention elusive when Cat tried to catch up with him after class. Combined with his obvious reluctance to provide her with a name, only one explanation really made sense.

He was serious about someone, and he had been trying to keep it secret.

Keeping secrets was bloody well and good if it meant from the rest of the school, but Cat had been best friends with Scorpius since childhood, and she'd be damned if he didn't clue her in now.

"Seriously, Scor! I'm waiting for an answer here!"

Having been given a few moments to collect himself, Scorpius managed to sound composed when he finally answered Cat.

"Well, I could tell you. But I think it might be more fun to make you guess."

Cat rolled her eyes for the second time, already regretting her previous decision to tempt Scorpius with a piece of juicy gossip. But now the tables had turned, and he was using her own words against her. She didn't have any other options, though, so she rose to the challenge, immediately running through her mind for a list of girls Scorpius had recently interacted with.

"Ramona Blackburn?" she guessed without a lot of confidence. She had seen them chatting after a Prefect Meeting a few days ago, but then again, it had been the younger girl who had seemed more interested in their conversation. Scorpius had looked bored, as always.

"No."

"Carmen Archuleta?" A fellow 6th-year Slytherin, the dark-haired girl wasn't a bad guess. Her crush on Scorpius wasn't exactly discreet, but Cat hadn't seen him give her the time of day recently.

"No."

"Marisol Chadwick?" Cat was getting wilder with her guesses now. Marisol was a Gryffindor, and friends with Rose Weasley. Two strikes. She had been Scorpius's assigned partner in Transfiguration the other day, though, so there was hope.

"No. Fantastic bum that one, though."

"Gross." Cat wrinkled her nose. "What about Tess Davies?"

"Nope. She's old news. Last year, remember?"

Cat didn't, actually. "Desiree Kirke? She's a bit … erm, friendly, right?"

"That she is," Scorpius acquiesced. "But still no."

"This is annoying," Cat complained. Scorpius, however, made no move to enlighten her, so they continued their patrol in silence. He was smirking slightly now, while Cat frowned, deep in thought.

They passed the Ravenclaw portrait hole, and it suddenly came to her.

"Ahh, I know!" she said triumphantly. "Jacqueline Bonnacord. I saw you two in Defense the other day."

Scorpius blinked a few times before responding, as if he was surprised at Cat's correct guess.

"You're right," he said resignedly.

"I knew it!" Cat couldn't resist a bit of gloating, nor the little victory dance she burst into, twirling around in the corridor and flailing her arms into the air.

"I still can't condone your use of _Aguamenti_ , though. Did you really have to get Jacqueline's blouse all wet? I swear Dougie Macmillan was going to pass out, he was ogling her so much. You really ought to be more careful. The girl is part-Veela."

"I know," Scorpius smirked. "Shouldn't you be congratulating me?"

Cat huffed. "I'll congratulate you the next time you don't show off your caveman instincts in front of the whole class."

"Fine," Scorpius retorted. "And I'll save my congratulations for when you actually manage to win a duel."

"Low blow," Cat muttered, but she still managed a smile. It had almost been a week since her embarrassing defeat at the hands of Albus Potter, and she was mostly over it by now. That didn't mean she was back to making eye contact when she passed him between classes, but she could now successfully hear his name without blushing.

Plucking up the courage, she decided to probe Scorpius a little bit more about his messy-haired best friend.

"Albus was surprisingly good," she mentioned in what she hoped was an off-handed tone.

Scorpius scoffed. "Yeah, well, when your dad defeats the darkest wizard of all time, Defense doesn't really seem like a topic you should be slacking off in."

She had to give him that. "I suppose winning duels probably runs in the family."

"He works hard, too," Scorpius piped up, his tone slightly defensive.

"I know that," Cat responded, trying to modify her previous statement. "I just wouldn't be surprised if he's had lessons or extra training or something before."

"Just because that's what it would take to beat you? You're so arrogant, Cat."

Scorpius's words themselves were harsh, but Cat recognized the teasing tone of voice and was forced to laugh at herself once more.

"I have to admit; I was put in my place. Now if only someone would put you in yours."

She paused a moment to gauge Scorpius's reaction. "Jacqueline up for the challenge?" she asked.

"We'll see," he responded cryptically.

From there, their conversation devolved into some more gossip. Cat relayed some more tidbits from last night to Scorpius, who was enjoying himself, though he'd never admit it. Every once in a while, he'd pause to ask Cat to clarify, or chime in with a fact of his own. They finished their patrol quickly, perhaps missing a few late-night mischief-makers thanks to their hearty gossiping session.

They ended up back in front of the Slytherin portrait hole. Scorpius muttered the password ("Phineas") and started to make his way toward his own dormitory. Halfway there, he turned around, his face pensive, a question still clearly waiting on the tip of his tongue.

Cat knew what he was going to ask before he even said it.

"Trinity Flint," Cat answered.

Scorpius looked puzzled.

"The ex-girlfriend. You know, the one who got with Pritchard?"

At this, Scorpius broke into a full-blown laugh. "How'd you know I was going to ask you that?"

"Please," Cat smirked. "I knew it was torturing you not to know."

And with that, Cat left him in the common room and headed toward her own dormitory.

* * *

By the next day, Cat still had not found her notes. She had been forced to borrow Annie's to study from, which were barely legible, and had only just managed to complete her homework before going to sleep at 2 AM. She was currently coasting on about five hours of sleep, which wasn't nearly enough.

Her bad luck continued as Charms class began. Flitwick had delivered on his promise from last lecture period of a two-part test on Unbreakable Charms, both theoretical and practical. Considering Cat could cast the charm in her sleep, she wasn't too worried about the practical portion. She did have a few doubts about the written part, considering she hadn't studied the material very thoroughly, giving up after a few minutes trying to decipher Annie's untidy scrawl.

Cat's real misery stemmed from the fact that she had been unable to nab her spot from the previous lesson next to Benjamin Goldstein. Instead, it had been claimed by one of his mates, a bloke with long blond hair tied into a bun. Her only consolation was that there wouldn't be much partner interaction anyway, and therefore not much of an opportunity to attempt flirting with the cute Ravenclaw prefect.

She blamed the man-bun anyway for the missed opportunity.

Stupid man-bun. It looked ridiculous.

Okay, actually it looked great, better than any attempt at a bun Cat tried. Her hair was unfortunately too thick. Cecily had told her once that it looked like a hippogriff took a giant shit on her head, and well, the girl wasn't wrong. Overall she could use a bit more tact, but she did tend to speak the truth.

Cat needed to channel a little bit of Cecily right now, anyway. She finished the theoretic portion of the test, and flipped it over on her desk. She needed to stop being jealous of a stupid man-bun and concentrate on devising a way to strike up a conversation with Benjamin. She could use some of Cecily's advice. Too bad the girl in question was sitting on the other side of the room, engrossed in a conversation with Dahlia even though Flitwick expected silence during tests. He was currently giving her a bit of a glare, not that she she noticed at all.

A shuffle of parchment broke Cat out of her reverie. Following the lead of the random Hufflepuff bloke sitting next to her, she passed her parchment forward, consumed with last minute anxiety—not about her test answers, although she still lamented the loss of her notes, but about how she was supposed to talk to Benjamin before class ended.

For the practical part of the quiz, Flitwick passed out an assortment of objects to all his students. Confident she could tackle whatever he gave to her, Cat allowed herself to glance around the room first. The boy next to her had gotten a rather ugly mirrored vase. His concentrated facial expression reflected in the panes, and Cat resisted the urge to laugh.

Her own object seemed a bit trickier. At first glance, it seemed to be a figurine of sorts, like a miniature castle. As she looked closer, she realized that it was more of a model. Someone had obviously taken the time to put the pieces together in a way that the tiny figure rather resembled Hogwarts. Seemingly held together with only a bit of glue, Cat wondered what she was supposed to do.

She spared another glance around, feeling a bit like a cheater for her wandering eyes. Benjamin was hard at work, focused on a small cupboard with glass panels that sat in front of him. Meanwhile, Annie must've finished casting her charm on a large lamp, because she was currently charming the lampshade into a more stylish color.

Returning to her own object, Cat grew quizzical. It was obviously nothing like the other tasks her classmates received, and she felt a bit put out. Looking up toward the front of the classroom, she made sudden eye contact with Flitwick, who nodded, almost imperceptibly, in her direction.

She nodded back, but immediately grew frustrated. This wasn't even the same application of Unbreakable Charms! Her classmates cast the charm with the intent of reinforcing already existing bonds, where she was supposed to create unbreakable links where there previously hadn't been any bonds at all. It was an unfair quiz, and if she had been uppity enough to have been sorted into Ravenclaw, she probably would've complained about it.

Instead, like a true Slytherin, she stewed quietly. This is what she had been thinking about last lesson, theorizing about the separate applications, instead of listening. Maybe Flitwick had mentioned another variation of the charm to use?

But surely, some of her other classmates would've been tested similarly. Cat did one last sweep of the room—she was the only one.

She had some ideas, of course. They had come to her last lesson, and remained jotted down on that blasted sheet of parchment she had lost.

All her classmates around her were finishing up. Several, including Annie, and annoyingly, Albus Potter, had already handed Flitwick their charmed objects and were heading out of the classroom. Annie shot Cat a sympathetic look, which really didn't help with her mounting frustrations.

For the second time that week, Cat decided to attempt some experimental magic. By modifying her wand movement as well the suffix attached to the incantation, she extrapolated that the property behind the original Unbreakable Charm would spread to the newly-created bonds. She wrote down her ideas on a spare bit of parchment, giving the model another once-over just to be sure.

Well, if Flitwick wanted her to do experimental (and possibly illegal) magic in his own classroom, Cat wasn't going to let him down. She murmured the incantation for her modified charm.

And the miniature castle in front of her promptly exploded.

A combination of plaster and ash rained down around Cat as she stared at the charred remnants of the model. Her eyes fixated on the tiny details, like how only one of the miniature Quidditch hoops in the figurine pitch remained upright and how the decimated trees of the Forbidden Forest looked like they had been ravaged by a forest fire.

Mostly, she wondered how it went wrong.

The sound of laughter cut into her musings. Startled, Cat looked around the room, anticipating a sea of tittering classmates eager to poke fun at the girl who had managed to cause an explosion while attempting an Unbreakable Charm. She was beginning to understand the plight of poor Rory Finnegan, a Hufflepuff who was well-known for both his tendency to cause things to explode and his perpetually singed-off eyebrows.

To her surprise, the source of laughter did not emanate from any of her peers. The classroom had cleared out completely, save for Cat and Professor Flitwick. In fact, it was the diminutive professor himself who was struggling to stifle his amusement.

Cat felt rather annoyed. She wasn't accustomed to failing at anything involving schoolwork, and especially not this spectacularly. Her loss in the duel last week tugged at the back of her mind, but that suddenly seemed inconsequential compared to her complete fiasco of an attempt at an Unbreakable Charm. Even the dim-witted Lilia Stevenson had managed to perform one without exploding anything.

Plus, it seemed awfully unprofessional for Flitwick to be laughing. She looked away to conceal her blush, concentrating on packing up her things before Flitwick's voice cut in.

"Would you please come up here, Miss Zabini?"

Grudgingly, Cat pocketed her wand and abandoned her book bag on the desk. It didn't seem like she had a choice.

Flitwick had stopped laughing now, for which Cat was grateful, but she still couldn't bring herself to speak first. She waited for him to say something, anything, but instead he pulled out a leather-bound notebook, opened it, and with great deliberation, began to write.

At first, Cat wasn't sure if he meant for her to take a look, but after a sidelong glance from Flitwick, she peered over. It was his gradebook, she realized, although confusion dawned over her once more as she saw him mark a bright red "O" in the space next to her name.

The silence was thick for a few moments until Cat felt she could take it no longer.

"Professor?"

Apparently struck mute, Flitwick only smiled in response, his goblin ancestry made slightly more evident by the toothiness of his grin and the slight point to his ears Cat only noticed for the first time up close. He began rummaging through a set of drawers to his right, only stopping when he pulled out a stack of paper.

"I thought about returning these to you before the examination today, Miss Zabini," Flitwick began, finally breaking the silence. "However, considering your level of achievement in this class, I hardly thought you'd need them."

Recognizing her favorite shade of blue ink as well as her own tidy handwriting, Cat realized that Flitwick was holding her notes from lesson last week, the ones she had lost. He held them out to her, and Cat accepted, though she was still confused about her grade on the exam.

"I couldn't help but notice some of your jottings in the margins, young lady. While I can't speak of your merit as an artist based on your doodles, I can say you have quite the aptitude for spell-crafting."

Cat's face must have registered confusion, because Flitwick continued quickly.

"Spell-crafting. Based on spell theory, which, according to your notes in the margins, you have quite the grasp on despite us never covering it in class. In fact, you must humor the antics of your old professor here, for it was mainly for my own amusement that I forced you to test out your theories for the practical exam today."

"So the Hogwarts model… my choice of object was deliberate?"

Flitwick nodded. "Again, you must forgive me for any embarrassment I may have caused. I am well-assured of your proficiency in Unbreakable Charms; I just wanted to give you a little warning of the danger associated by experimenting with spells."

Cat flushed again, ashamed. It was bad enough she had attempted an experimental spell in a duel with Albus Potter, but to perform one during an exam? She was an idiot. There was a reason no sixth-year should mess around with creating their own spells, no matter how fascinating.

Flitwick noticed her reaction. "Oh, I don't mean to discourage you, Miss Zabini. That was quite the spell for you to reproduce on the fly, especially without the aid of your original notes. Notes, I might add, that include quite a clever bit of thinking on your part. I, myself, had never considered several of the applications of an Unbreakable Charm you suggested until I read through them."

He paused sharply, pushing down his spectacles to glance upwards at Cat. "Have you considered a career path after Hogwarts, Miss Zabini?"

"Um, well, I have been thinking about some options…" Cat spluttered, not sure what to say. Her mother seemed to think that Cat would marry well after she graduated, and her father unable to care less about what his daughter did. Cat herself hadn't thought much about it.

"It takes a sharp mind to see all the connections necessary to understand spell theory. Spell-crafting itself is a precise art, one that shouldn't be meddled with unless one proceeds with utmost care. I do, however, believe you have the potential to succeed in this field, and that is not a statement I make lightly."

Cat heard the words coming from Flitwick's mouth, but could not, for the life of her, make sense of any of them.

"I don't understand," she said flatly. "I nearly singed off my hair with that explosion. Isn't that a sign that I should _not_ be experimenting with magic?"

"What was the incantation you used?" Flitwick asked, dismissing her question with one of his own.

"Irrumpia Forcum," Cat responded, "but I hardly see how that matters, considering it didn't work."

"And what modifications did you make to the original wand movement?"

"Well, because a regular Unbreakable Charms calls for a flick and a diagonal jab, I figured a flick and an extended circle might have the unifying effect of properties I was looking for. I'm not sure, though—I was really just extrapolating and quite stupid to attempt that in the first place."

"Nonsense! From idiocy and mistakes our greatest achievements are born. Show me someone who has never failed and I'll show you someone who has never achieved, I say."

He paused for a moment, and Cat thought he was giving his words a little weight for dramatic effect.

"I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I did a little revising to your theories, and I think I came up with a spell that works. Pay attention."

Flitwick produced another miniature model of Hogwarts from a cabinet behind his desk. He leveled her with a gaze that made Cat feel small despite her height advantage.

"Irrumpia Forcum!" he exclaimed, his wand moving with the sound of his voice, tracing the shape of an extended circle, followed by a flick and a diagonal jab.

The result really wasn't that dramatic. The model sat in the same spot, looking quite unchanged. Cat wondered what Flitwick had expected. She was surprised to note the rather self-satisfied smile that now occupied his face.

"Go ahead. Test it out."

Slowly, Cat used both hands to lift the model off Flitwick's desk. She glanced over at her professor once more, and he nodded his approval.

Cat shook her head, trying to clear the last lingering doubt. She raised the model above her head, bringing it down with as much force as she could muster, and finally, letting go.

What should have splintered into millions of tiny plaster and wooden fragments, sat perfectly intact on the cool stone floor, as immaculate as ever.

Cat couldn't find words. Her mouth wasn't quite capable of forming them either, as her jaw was currently a bit slack.

"I only really had to modify your spell slightly. The incantation was sufficient, and the addition of an extended circle was necessary for unification. You just needed to complete the unbreakable property by finishing the original wandwork.

"You really have quite the mind for this, Miss Zabini," Flitwick continued, interpreting her silence as the end of all her doubts. "I don't want you to get down on yourself about that explosion earlier. It was really just a warning, an initiation if you will. I'd be willing to give you a few more lessons on spell theory in the future, provided you're interested."

It took several more moments for the shock to wear off before Cat responded. "I still can't believe that worked," she began, stroking the bonds of the model castle she had picked up from the ground, and now held in her arms.

"You almost had it correct on your own," Flitwick said.

"If by almost, you mean it backfired in my face!" But Cat was laughing now, and Flitwick's offer was beginning to sound more tempting. "What do you mean by lessons?"

"Oh, nothing too intense," he assured her. "Perhaps a few times a month, just to test the waters. If you don't enjoy them, we can always stop. I do happen to know that spell-crafting is a lucrative profession – there's quite a demand for spell-crafters right now, both with independent contractors and within the Ministry. Unless you have another profession you're currently seriously considering?"

Cat quickly shook her head. "Um, no. There's nothing, really."

"Well, take a while to consider it. I really think you'd enjoy it. Here, I'll write a note for your next class."

While part of Cat's brain marveled at how fast the time had passed—she had now missed at least half of her Transfiguration lesson—the other half was alight with excitement. Scorpius and Annie would tease her for being nerdy and relishing such academic work, but the thought of experimenting with her own spells really did thrill her.

"Professor," she piped up suddenly, surprising both herself and Flitwick, who smudged the ink on her note, "what nights are you available?"

* * *

After a long day of classes, all Cat wanted to do was go to bed early, the usual expectations of a fun Friday night be damned.

Unfortunately, her friends had another idea.

"Come on, Cat, come to the party with us!"

"It'll be fun! Cooper Hawthorne even asked about you last time!"

"You can wear my navy dress and those gold heels of Cecily's!"

"I didn't say she could do that!"

"Shut up, Cece! We _want_ her to come, remember?"

"I have firewhiskey!"

"How about those brown wedges instead?"

"There's going to be a live band!"

"No, the gold ones would look better!"

"I heard James Potter is going to be there!"

"You said you'd come out with us at least once this year!"

"Fine, I guess she can borrow my shoes."

Cat sighed, and laid a hand on Cecily's shoulder. "Don't worry. I won't be borrowing your shoes. I'm not coming."

"Are you sure, sweetie?" Cecily asked. "Because I would let you wear them, even though they kind of complete my outfit right now."

Smiling, Cat continued her refusal. "No, that's all right. I'm content here with my book and Marjorie."

"You know," Dahlia interjected. "Cats, even cats with people names, are no substitute for human companionship."

"Or getting drunk and grinding on cute boys," Annie added.

"Who reads anyway?" Cecily asked.

"Me." Cat put her foot down. "Seriously, I just want to relax tonight. You three go have fun. I know it's not every night Hufflepuff house decides to throw a kegger."

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us?" Annie pleaded, attempting to cajole her best friend by widening her already large brown eyes and sticking out her bottom lip.

"Stop that—you look ridiculous," Cat commanded. "And you know that only works on your brothers, anyway."

"A girl can hope," Annie sighed.

"Seriously. Go have fun!"

"You don't have to tell me twice!" Cecily joked, making a beeline for the door that seemed unnaturally fast considering the staggeringly tall gold heels she was wearing.

"I mean it. I really do appreciate you asking, though."

"Oh all right," Annie conceded. She sat up from Cat's bed. "We're still on for a breakfast date tomorrow?"

"If I can drag your hungover ass out of bed?" Cat questioned. "Yes."

"Doubtful," Dahlia snorted.

Annie stuck her tongue out at the willowy brunette, but began following her over to the door.

"Now don't keep Marjorie up too late," Annie scolded. "She has a bedtime, you know, or else she gets grouchy."

Cat rolled her eyes. "Oh, leave me alone already!"

Annie smiled, and blew her a kiss goodbye before closing the door behind her.

* * *

Cat was good on her word. She managed to read a few more chapters of her novel before passing out on her bed, her feline friend fast asleep right next to her. She dozed for a few peaceful, dreamless hours before being woken by the sound of sniffling.

Nudging Marjorie out of the way, Cat parted the emerald green draperies of her bed to see a forlorn-looking Annie perched on the side of her bed, mascara streaking down her cheeks, still clad in a charcoal-gray party dress, though the zipper had been undone in the back.

"Annie?" Cat said lowly, her voice an odd wavelength due to being awoken so abruptly. "What's wrong? Where's Dahlia and Cecily?"

"They're… _HIC_ …both… _HIC_ …sleeping," Annie rasped between hiccups.

"Shhhh," Cat consoled, her bare feet quietly padding across the space between their beds so she could sit next to her best friend. She scratched her fingers up and down Annie's exposed back.

She let Annie breathe for a while before asking again.

"What happened?"

Another tear ran down her face as she answered. "Sam and I fought."

"Oh sweetie," Cat murmured, continuing to massage her back.

"He was being a bloody… _HIC_ … jackass. All I did was ask him to dance with me for a… _HIC_ … while and he told me to sod off because he wanted to play Butterbeer Pong with his… _HIC_ … mates. Who… _HIC_ … tells their girlfriend to sod… _HIC_ …off?"

Not for the first time, Cat was unsure what to say to make Annie feel better. Sam was a good enough guy, but he and Annie knew how to push each other's buttons, and they were only worse to each other when they had both had too much to drink. It wasn't a pattern exactly, but Cat had seen Annie drunk and upset a few times now, and was beginning to see the common thread.

"Let's talk about it some more in the morning. Let's get you something to drink and into some pajamas first, all right?"

Annie didn't protest, which Cat took as acquiescence. She pulled out a pair of flannel pajama shorts and an oversize t-shirt, making sure it was a hand-me-down from one of Annie's brothers and _not_ one of Sam's old Quidditch jerseys before helping her best friend into them. She poured some water into the glass by Annie's bedside as well, but not before sneaking in a vial of Calming Draught into the contents first.

She watched as Annie took a nice long gulp, and then helped her into her bed, tucking the quilt in after her. Marjorie, evidently sensing her owner's distress, leapt from Cat's bed to the foot of Annie's and curled into a ball.

Cat couldn't help but smile at the cat's protectiveness before crawling back into her own bed, grateful for the lack of boy drama in her own life.

* * *

 **Author's Note** : Thanks for sticking with me! I know this chapter was a bit of filler as far as the plot goes, but it was fun to write nevertheless. If you have a moment, I'd love to know what you think :)


	5. The One with All the Espionage

**There's Something About Albus  
** by sweaterweather21

* * *

 **Last Chapter** : (Sorry, I know it's been a while!) Cat and Scorpius gossip while patrolling the castle, Cat takes a difficult test, and Annie has a rough night.

* * *

Chapter 5: The One with All the Espionage  
In which Cat, Annie, and Dahlia's girls' day takes a different turn.

 _Everyone knows all about my direction_  
 _And in my heart somewhere I wanna go there_  
 _Still, I don't go there_  
 _I don't wanna get caught, up in the rhythm of it_  
 _But I can't help myself, no, I can't help myself, no, no_

Say Something – Justin Timberlake & Chris Stapleton

* * *

Cat was worried about Annie.

It wasn't the first time her best friend had drank too much the night before and suffered the consequences the next morning, but it was the first time she refused to be lured out of bed by the promise of blueberry waffles for breakfast.

This was concerning. Annie would do almost anything for a plate of blueberry waffles.

"C'mon, Annie," she pleaded, throwing back the emerald green bed hangings of Annie's four-poster. "We made plans! And you know the house elves stop making breakfast at noon!"

"I don't care," came the muffled response. Cat watched as Annie fumbled for her wand on the bedside table and attempted to charm her bed hangings shut again.

Fortunately for Cat, Annie's hangover meant less control over the magic, and though the bed hangings swayed an inch or two, they remained firmly in place.

Annie groaned. Cat decided it was time to try a more sympathetic approach.

"Annie, I know you're upset," she began, sitting on the edge of the bed gingerly. "But honest to Merlin, I think it would make you feel better to get something to eat. And to get out of this bed."

"Or take a shower!" Dahlia piped up, emerging from their shared bathroom clad only in a heather-gray towel. "I feel loads better already."

Annie didn't respond. She just rolled over in bed, and for the first time, Cat got a glimpse of her best friend. Her normally sleek blonde hair was mussed into a terrible case of bedhead, and streaks of black eyeliner smudged horribly around her eyes, which were still bloodshot from crying.

"Oh, honey." Cat reached out and scratched the petite girl's back in what she hoped was a comforting gesture. She still wasn't sure she was doing this right. "It'll get better. You'll make up. You always do."

"I don't know," Annie mumbled, and Cat knew it had been the wrong thing to say. She watched as a small tear leaked down Annie's face once more. Instead of trying to say anything else, she simply sat there for a few more minutes, scratching Annie's back in silence.

"Tell you what," Cat said eventually. "I know you don't want to go, but I'm getting hungry for some hash browns, and it's nearly half-past eleven. I'm going to head down to breakfast with Dahlia and Cecily and we'll bring you back something, okay? But try to get out of bed and at least get dressed."

Taking pity on Annie, she closed the bed hangings after she stood up. Dahlia had changed into a plum-colored sweater and some leggings, but their fourth roommate was conspicuously absent.

"Where's Cecily?" Cat mused aloud.

Dahlia finished tying her hair into a ponytail before responding. "I'm not sure. She didn't make it back with me and Annie last night."

Cat frowned.

"Not that I didn't try to get her to come with me," Dahlia amended quickly. "I felt bad leaving her there. But Annie was starting to get messy, and I had drunk a little too much as well, so I thought it was best to just get out of there."

"Oh, Dahlia, I didn't mean to make you feel guilty! We all know how stubborn Cecily gets. It's just that I thought she was still owling that Greek bloke."

Dahlia shrugged. "She told me the other day that he was getting boring. I can't keep up with the changes in her love life."

"So who did she end up with?"

"Beats me. Though I did she her chatting with Nash Sutton an awful lot last night."

"Nash Sutton?" Cat was incredulous. "Isn't he seeing Lily Potter? That seems like asking for trouble, even for Cecily."

"That's just what I saw. Though at that point I was at least four shots of firewhiskey in, so I may not be the most reliable source of information."

Cat giggled at that. "Who knows with that girl, anyway? Let's go eat."

Dahlia nodded her assent, following Cat out of the dormitory and heading down to the Great Hall.

* * *

They ate breakfast slowly, the ranks of Hogwarts students noticeably thinner than usual despite the fact that it was almost midday. Cat was good on her word, however, and managed to smuggle a plate loaded with blueberry waffles back to the Slytherin dorm when she returned with Dahlia.

Cecily was still absent, which worried Cat, but at the moment she had bigger enchantments to cast. Annie still remained in her bed, in the same position they had left her over an hour ago.

She exchanged a look with Dahlia, mutually deciding that enough was enough. While Dahlia yanked back the dormitory curtains, flooding the room with bright green light from the lake, Cat pushed aside the tapestries on Annie's bed for the second time that morning. The blonde girl squirmed, but reluctantly sat up in bed.

"You bitches," she moaned, reaching for the glass of water on her bedside table. It was only after she chugged the contents that she managed somewhat of an apology.

"M'sorry," she murmured, just loud enough that Cat could hear. "You didn't deserve that. I'm just cranky and tired is all. I could stay in bed all day."

"Yes, but you won't," Cat interrupted.

"Trust me, Annie," Dahlia said. "You'll feel loads better if you get up and do something."

"Once you shower and put clothes on, I'll give you these!" Cat chimed in with a promise, gesturing to the plate of waffles she had set on her own bedside table.

Annie eyed the plate for a long moment, long enough that Cat was beginning to wonder if the persuasive power of Annie's favorite breakfast food was still intact. But in the end, Annie stood up and walked to grab her towel, but not before stealing a bite from the plate.

"It's a miracle," Dahlia remarked drily as soon as they heard the jets of water start up.

"I'll say," Cat agreed. "Now I just have to convince her to come to Hogsmeade with me."

Dahlia snorted. "Good luck with that. I was going to settle with just a shower."

"Where's your ambition?" Cat teased. "C'mon, if you help me, I'll buy you a butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks."

"Merlin, Cat, twist my wand! I'll go, I'll go," Dahlia acquiesced with a laugh.

"Good." Cat smiled, happy to get her way. "You know, I really shouldn't have to bribe you into being a good friend."

"Yeah, you probably shouldn't have to," Dahlia retorted.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Cat pressed on, jokingly.

"Not nearly as ashamed as I'd be if I turned down an offer of a free butterbeer. That's still good, right?"

* * *

Nearly an hour later, the trio of Slytherin girls finally left the castle. After quite a bit of dawdling, Annie had been forced into a nice pair of jeans and a cream-colored sweater. Cecily had made an appearance in the dormitory as well, though only for as long as it took her to change her outfit and fix her hair, for she was late for her date. Teasing Cecily about jumping from one man to another had momentarily revived Annie from her misery, but as soon as the brisk October wind unwound her scarf as they stepped outside, she began to have second thoughts.

"I still can't believe you talked me into this."

"You'll thank us later," Dahlia reprimanded, taking Annie's knitted scarf in her own hands and winding it back around the petite blonde's head.

"Dahlia's right," Cat agreed. "It'll be cathartic. We can scope out some cute blokes and drink butterbeer at the same time! A win-win, if you ask me."

"Unless you happen to like girls," Dahlia piped up.

Cat nodded her head in acknowledgement. "Well then you can chat up the cute chicks and drink butterbeer at the same time."

Dahlia smiled. "Sounds good to me! Annie?"

It was the wrong question to ask. "I don't care about cute blokes," she muttered. "I just want Sam."

Cat and Dahlia exchanged an uneasy glance as they neared the Three Broomsticks. The bells attached to the heavy brass handle tinkled as Cat pushed open the heavy door.

"Well, forget about both sexes, then." Cat said, attempting to keep the mood cheery. "The first round of butterbeers is on me!"

"Now that's what I like to hear!"

Startled, Cat turned toward the sound of the interloping voice. Upon the sight of Albus Potter, clad in a Gryffindor jumper and a worn pair of blue jeans and sitting comfortably in the corner booth like he owned the whole place, she began to reconsider her previous statement about ignoring all the men in the place.

Luckily, Scorpius intervened before the blush that was just starting to creep up her cheeks was out of control.

"Way to go Potter, now you've blown our cover!"

Scorpius's genuinely agitated facial expression confused Cat. Meanwhile, Albus just rolled his eyes.

"Now we have to relocate!" Scorpius exclaimed. "Cat, make good on that round of butterbeers and meet us in the back." And with that, he yanked Albus out of the booth and gestured emphatically for both Dahlia and Annie to move towards the back of the restaurant, leaving his half-empty tankard of butterbeer behind.

Cat watched them leave quizzically, but having been exposed to almost sixteen years' worth of odd behavior from her male best friend, figured she might as well roll with it. She approached Ariadne at the bar with a galleon in hand and was rewarded with five full mugs. Cat debated how to carry them over for a few seconds until she remembered she was a goddamn witch and levitated them over, careful to maintain her focus as she navigated through the crowded pub.

"So what's with all the secrecy?" she asked as she finally located her four companions wedged into a small booth in the shape of a half-circle near the side exit.

"I'll tell you if you keep your bloody voice down," Scorpius commanded imperiously, having taken a position of authority at the center of the booth.

Cat rolled her eyes, but lowered the mugs to the table anyway. She slid into the space next to Albus nonchalantly, a seating arrangement that she would usually chalk up to Annie's interference, but given her morose state, was most likely Dahlia's work.

As she reached for a mug, Cat gave Scorpius a pointed look. "So what gives? If you don't explain yourself soon, I swear I'll tell the whole pub about that time in third year you tried highlighting your own hair."

"That's not necessary," Scorpius responded quickly at the same time as Albus asked, "How do you reckon your hair needed to get lighter?"

Cat's lip curled mischievously. She turned toward Albus, who appeared eager. Annie and Dahlia had already heard this story. "Well, it was after Winona Blair broke up with her boyfriend. Remember, you were determined that she was hitting on you? Never mind the fact that she was two years older and your voice hadn't even dropped—"

"I think that's more than enough—"

"You came to me in tears because you botched the spell—"

"The box had faulty instructions!"

Scorpius had crossed his arms defensively and was now pouting at Cat. She simply laughed and again turned toward Albus.

"Well, I think you get the point. His hair recovered, thanks to my charmwork."

"And my book of beauty charms!" piped up Annie. Cat smiled at her best friend, grateful she was finally perking up a bit.

While not exactly a blush, Scorpius's cheeks had turned a faint shade of pink as he glowered at Annie. Meanwhile, Albus was chortling.

"Anyway," Dahlia spoke after a few seconds of laughter at Scorpius's expense, "we're still dying to know why we're crammed in this dingy booth back here instead of that perfectly nice one in the front."

Scorpius immediately brightened, grateful for the change in subject.

"We're undercover," he stated matter-of-factly, his eyes darting out toward the main dining area, as if he was afraid their laughter had been too conspicuous.

"Doing what?" Cat retorted. "Practicing for the Auror Academy, yeah?"  
Albus looked embarrassed, but Scorpius just scoffed. "No, you banshee. We're spying on Rose."

A hush fell on the table, only to be broken by Dahlia. "Rose Weasley?"

Scorpius nearly fell out of the booth as he aggressively clamped his hands over the brunette's mouth.

"Could you announce it more loudly, maybe to the entire pub this time please?" Albus chimed in with a wisecrack.

Dahlia huffed, but lowered her voice to an exaggerated whisper. "Okay, my bad. But still, why? Since when does Rose bloody Weasley do anything interesting enough to justify you two fools posing as spies?"

Cat wanted to defend Rose—she was a perfectly nice girl, especially after her memory had been jogged about Cat's name—but stopped short. It _was_ curious as to why they were spying on Rose. She was a prefect after all, and obtained some of the highest marks in the grade thanks to both her diligence and natural intelligence. It was difficult to guess as to why she would be sneaking around Hogsmeade, and why Albus had dragged Scorpius along to figure it out. He didn't seem like the overprotective type. As far as Cat could make out, that role belonged firmly to James.

"She's on a bloody date," Scorpius spat out, and the words hung in the air like a Patronus Charm.

Now that was intriguing. Rose was known more for her high marks than her love life. Cat faintly recalled her with an older Gryffindor boy at the beginning of their fifth year, but for as much as she had heard from Cecily and Scorpius, among others, that had tapered out a while ago. It was also interesting that Albus was apparently so concerned. Was this date of hers someone unsavory?

She had to ask. "With who?"

Scorpius was prompt in his reply. "Owen Darlington."

"Wow, what a scumbag." Cat's sarcastic quip was even faster in response, earning a chuckle from Dahlia, Annie, and even Albus. Scorpius's scowl only deepened.

"Just because you all think he's a good guy doesn't mean he'll make a good date. Besides, he's definitely hiding something. Who smiles all the time? It's unnatural."

"Or maybe he's just a genuinely nice guy?" Annie suggested obviously, to counter Scorpius's dubious claims. Cat nodded in agreement. Owen Darlington was nothing if not completely inoffensive. He was a 'Puff in their year, decently good-looking and known for being a genuinely nice guy and volunteering his spare time by helping Professor Longbottom with the weeding in the Herbology greenhouses. If anything, Cat was surprised by Rose's rather bland taste.

Albus attempted to enter the conversation. "We're not saying Darlington is a bad guy or anything," he began as he gave Scorpius a pointed look. "It's just that Rosie doesn't date much, so we're just looking out for her."

"Well, I think that's sweet." Annie sighed, a shadow of a smile crossing her face for a brief second.

Cat wanted to agree, but privately maintained her suspicions. Both Albus and Scorpius were being dodgy, and now that she thought about it, it was even stranger that they were drinking butterbeer in a group of five, platonically, on the first of a perfectly good Hogsmeade weekend. It was surprising that Scorpius hadn't asked Jacqueline after she had forced his confession about her in Prefect rounds the other week, and even stranger that Albus was here without Talia.

In the face of lively conversation and good company, however, Cat shoved her doubts away—for the time being. Albus had just returned to the table after ordering another round of butterbeer when Dahlia was the one to notice the much-speculated redhead surreptitiously sneak into the pub and slide into a corner booth away from the window, Owen Darlington a few paces behind.

Scorpius was the first to comment, of course. "They're not holding hands yet, so it must not be going so well."

Dahlia shushed him. "Just try to listen!" she hissed.

The group watched as Darlington waited for Rose to sit down before heading up to the bar and returning with two mugs of butterbeer a minute later. It looked like Rose tried to hand him a few knuts, but he pushed them back across the table. Cat's eyesight wasn't perfect from this distance, but she thought Rose didn't look too thrilled, at least not initially. With the incessant chatter and shouting taking place across the Three Broomsticks, Cat struggled to pick up any details of their conversation, though she kept watching intently. Maybe she was taking this spying mission a little too seriously.

"Here," Albus interrupted suddenly, producing two Extendable Ears from his coat pocket and laying them out on the table.

"I haven't used one of these since I was like, seven," Cat scoffed, jokingly.

"I haven't used one of these since last week," Albus replied, and Cat stifled a giggle. "We'll have to share, if that's okay?"

Cat took one long look at him, only breaking it off when she found herself looking into his bright green eyes for a second too long. Meanwhile, Scorpius scrambled for the Ear while Dahlia and Annie leaned in close.

"I guess so, since you seem to be an expert," Cat countered, then instantly regretted it. She was struck, once again, by the fact that Albus had a girlfriend. It shouldn't keep surprising her like this.

Albus grinned, displaying a straight set of white teeth that made Cat gulp before she leaned in.

Luckily, the conversation between Rose and Darlington was distracting, not for its witty banter, but rather for its complete and utter lack of anything resembling wit. Cat almost managed to forget the boy she was currently leaning on as she took in the details of quite possibly the inanest conversation she had ever heard.

"Rose, huh? Does your name have any special meaning?"

Cat swore she could make out Rose rolling her eyes, even from this distance.

"No, not particularly. My father just liked it, I think."

Darlington nodded. "Interesting."

He continued nodding for a few seconds too long, betraying their extreme lack of chemistry.

"So, are you in any interesting electives this semester?" Rose asked, a note of desperation present in her voice. Already, her mug of butterbeer was almost half gone.

"Well, I'm in Divination for the easy O," Owen began, and Cat looked to Rose to see her reaction. The redhead just took another long swig of her drink as her date continued talking. "We've been trying to use a crystal ball this semester, so that has been interesting."

"Interesting how?" Rose asked, even as she couldn't look less intrigued herself.

"Well, I don't really know how to use the thing yet," Darlington admitted, "but there are some cool shapes in there sometimes."

"Hmmm, I bet." Rose acquiesced. They lapsed into silence for a few minutes as they both looked out the window and finished their mugs. Rose finished first, causing Darlington to speak up.

"Can I get you another one?"

Rose looked alarmed. "No!" she cried out, a little too loudly.

"I mean, no thank you," she adjusted quickly, correcting herself. "It's just that I told Minnie and Imogen I would meet with them to work on our Defense project, so I sort of have to get going pretty soon."

"Sure you do, Rose," Cat commented softly, a wry smile on her lips.

Albus laughed quietly and pulled away from the ear, gazing directly at Cat. "What, you think Rose is lying?"

"Well, she's definitely not telling the whole truth!" Cat whispered back.

"It is a pretty boring date," Albus admitted. "I don't blame her for trying to nip out early."

"At least this has been the opposite of boring. I mean, not that this is a date or anything," Cat was stumbling over her words at this point, but determined to keep going. "It's just that we just came here for a bit of a girl's day out, and then Scorpius roped us into this whole espionage thing, but it's ended up being pretty fun."

"To be fair, he roped me into this too," Albus responded. "But yeah, definitely more fun than I thought."

And then he smiled at Cat, and the combination of his grin and his piercing emerald eyes was _way_ too much, and Cat had to look away, back at Rose and Darlington across the pub.

"I hope it didn't disrupt your girls' day, though," he continued, when it was obvious Cat had no idea what to say in response.

"Oh, no way. We needed a distraction, more than anything," she divulged. Despite the moments when Albus himself was distracting to the point of uneasiness, she somehow felt comfortable telling him things.

"Annie had a rough one last night."

"We've all been there," Albus replied with a slight grimace, and Cat was charmed by his simple display of empathy. "At least she looks like she's enjoying herself today."

For the first time in a while, Cat glanced across the table, where Annie, Dahlia, and Scorpius were all squeezed together next to one Extendable Ear, intently observing the couple across the room. Rose was fidgeting impatiently now, playing with her purse in her lap and tapping her feet on the hardwood floor.

Albus had followed her gaze back to the unhappy couple. The Extendable Ear now lay discarded, on top of the table.

"How much longer do you reckon she sticks it out?" he asked.

"I say less than five minutes," Cat answered. "Rose doesn't seem like one to dawdle. The way she took down Lilia Stevenson in dueling last week in less than a minute was impressive."

Cat hadn't meant to bring up the dueling lesson again. Her defeat still stung, and her current proximity to her former opponent only increased the sensation of shame.

Albus, for his part, looked a bit guilty as well. "I felt badly afterward," he confessed, looking Cat in the eyes. "Those rope burns on your arms looked painful."

Cat was inwardly cursing herself for the topic of conversation they had ventured into, but managed a polite response.

"Please don't worry, Albus. They weren't as irritating as they looked, and Pomfrey took care of them in less than 5 seconds after class."

She wasn't lying. The burn of humiliation had managed to numb the sensation of physical pain for the rest of class.

"I still feel badly, though," Albus pressed on.

"Well, don't," Cat responded flatly. "You're a good duelist."

"Thanks. I've had some practice," he commented vaguely, which sent Cat's thoughts whirling. She wanted to ask him where, and against whom, but he continued.

"You were pretty impressive too, you know."

Cat almost scoffed, but restrained herself. She swallowed her pride and quietly murmured her thanks.

"Seriously, though, I've been meaning to ask you about that spell you sent my way at the end. I didn't recognize it. Where did you learn it?"

"Um, I didn't learn it exactly." Cat was blushing now, and hyper-aware of the fact. "I, well I guess you could say… I made it up."

"You invented a spell?" Albus was incredulous, his facial expression inquisitive like a child, suddenly full of questions. "When? How? Had you tested it before? And did you know it would work?"

Completely abashed, Cat took a second to exhale before attempting to respond to his onslaught of questions. She still felt guilty about even using the spell in the first place, and the last thing she wanted to do was talk about it. But Albus was so curious, and she figured she owed him an explanation at the very least. Plus, she had some questions of her own she wanted answers.

"I was, uh, interested in Flitwick's lecture on splitting spells last year and I did some… well I guess you could call it research, into the concept of splitting magic. It took most of the semester, but I managed to figure out how to split a few spells in two. I was the best at the Confundus Charm, so that's what I used on you. Or at least tried to."

Albus was quiet for a moment, so Cat filled the gap.

"I hope you weren't upset by that! I know it's still frowned upon to cast spells that haven't been registered with the Ministry, but I swear I thought it was safe. I hadn't actually cast it on a person yet, but nothing had gone wrong when I was experimenting, and to be honest, I was getting pretty frustrated during our duel and really just wanted do something unexpected…"

She trailed off and finally registered the expression on Albus's face. He looked impressed, and she tried not to feel too proud of herself.

"Bloody hell, Cat!" he exclaimed. "That's fucking insane! You're telling me you came up with that all by yourself?"

"Well, with the help of a few books from the Restricted Section," she admitted. "I might have abused my privilege as a Prefect a bit. And I couldn't work out how to increase the power of the spell once it was split. The result is more diluted than I wanted."

Albus just looked at her, shaking his head. "You're a bloody genius."

Cat huffed. "Then you're a bloody master duelist! You definitely knew what you were doing up there."

"I've had some experience," Albus said again. This time, the curiosity was too much for Cat, prompting her to ask for some clarification.

"From your Dad? I mean, he is an Auror. It makes sense."

"Uh, yeah. He is." Albus confirmed. "And he did help me. He actually taught me that spell I used at the end—the golden one that blocked yours and manifested in that sphere shape."

Cat nodded. "I wanted to ask you about that too. I mean, it was weird. It definitely caught me off guard."

"Yeah, I mean at that point I was kind of trying to show off a bit. It's basically just a fancy version of a Shield Charm that's meant to be more distracting than protective. But still, Cat, I can't get over that you invented your own bloody spell. You should register it with the Ministry and get it patented!"

His suggestion went over her head initially, as she was trying to figure out for whom exactly Albus was trying to show off.

"Oh, no!" she denied vehemently, a second too late, "I mean, there are still some parts of it I want to work on. And if I registered it, everybody would find out!"

"And that's a bad thing because...?" Albus left his question open-ended.

 _Because my mother would disapprove, and my father would not even bat an eyelash_.

"I just don't want to," Cat said, attempting to end the conversation, although it came out more defensive than she intended.

"Regardless, that's impressive."

"Well, so were you."

Cat's blush had returned now, but it was now accompanied by a self-satisfied smile. Albus may have been a Gryffindor, but he was smart, and his praise had quite the effect on her.

"Are you two done being nerds?" Scorpius cut in rudely, causing Cat to jerk away from the raven-haired boy next to her.

"Um, yeah, I guess so," Cat stuttered out, but Scorpius was already continuing.

"Because Rose and her idiot 'Puff have left the building, Dahlia is chatting up some witch at the bar, and Annie over here is ready to fall asleep in this booth. The mission is over."

Her blonde best friend blinked at the mention of her name. "What?"

"Okay, let's get you home, Annie," Cat said, scooting out of the booth and standing up.

"This was fun," Albus said, copying her own exit from the booth and echoing his sentiment from earlier. "We should all do some spying again sometime."

He looked around at the remainder of the group, but his eyes fell on Cat.

Scorpius scoffed. "You two," he began, gesturing at Albus and Cat, "need to improve your undercover skills. You lost your focus and started talking so loudly you almost compromised the mission!"

Annie nodded in agreement, a smirk on her face aimed directly at Cat.

"We'll try to do better next time," said Albus.

Scorpius only shook his head.

* * *

 **Author's Note** : Believe it or not, I AM still writing this story! And it's summer now, meaning I'm done with school for the semester and will have more time to devote to this story. But please drop me a review if you're still reading (or if you just started!)-it would mean the world to me :)


	6. The One with the Restricted Section

**There's Something About** **Albus**  
by sweaterweather21

* * *

 **Last Chapter:** Cat and Dahlia attempt to cheer Annie up but end up helping Albus and Scorpius with a top-secret espionage mission.

* * *

Chapter 6: The One with the Restricted Section  
In which Cat suffers the consequences of a mishap and witnesses something suspicious in the library.

 _Something must've gone wrong in my brain  
Got your chemicals all in my veins  
Felling all the highs, feeling all the pain_

Never Be the Same - Camila Cabello

* * *

Cat hated Potions. Perhaps it was a strong word, but she definitely resented the fact that it had never come easily to her. More accurately, she hated the fact that Scorpius was better than her at something.

If you didn't count playing Quidditch or picking up girls, that was. And Cat didn't.

She wasn't bad at Potions, not exactly. She had always excelled at the theoretical portion of their exams. And unlike her childhood best friend, she meticulously completed all the homework for the class and actually studied for the exams. She even had a higher mark overall in the class.

But it had been Scorpius who had achieved an 'O' on his O.W.L.s without hardly breaking a sweat, while Cat had only managed an 'E,' even after taking advantage of all of Köhler's extra brewing practice hours before the exam.

It was the brewing process itself that made her antsy. And the dank, claustrophobic Potions classroom didn't help matters. She blamed it on a bad first brewing experience in first year, when she stirred her Boil-Cure potion clockwise instead of counter-clockwise, and gave herself a nasty bout of acne for a week. Could you really blame a girl for being nervous around a cauldron after that?

She and Scorpius had been partners in Potions ever since. Cat had recruited him immediately after that first class, bribing him with unlimited access to her Charms notes in exchange for his natural talent for brewing potions. They had worked out a system. Cat would read the instructions from the textbook aloud as they went, and was also in charge of preparing all the ingredients. Meanwhile, Scorpius was in charge of the cauldron, adding the ingredients and stirring to meet the specifications of the recipe.

It was a good partnership, usually.

Except that today he was off his game.

Cat had already had to remind him twice to preheat the cauldron, and that was before he used the wrong dilution of aquaphiore as the base and had to start over.

She squinted up at the blackboard, attempting to read Professor Köhler's notes on advanced brewing techniques, but she had forgotten her glasses in the dormitory. To make matters worse, almost everyone else around her had already started brewing, and fumes were quickly taking over the dungeon classroom.

They were supposed to making the Wideye Potion, a minor healing potion used to wake patients from mild comas or drug-induced sleep. However, the potion was also notorious for its use as a stimulant, and could regularly be found on Hogwarts' black market around exam time. Cat privately questioned why Köhler thought it was a good idea to brew it in class.

Cat herself had been tempted to take a dose of Wideye last year while studying for her O.W.L.s, but had refrained in the end. Annie was more daring, however, and reported that while the potion allowed her to pull an all-nighter, its side effect was the lingering taste of cinnamon in her mouth for a week. This had occurred while she was still dating Sam, who confirmed the side effect after presumably sampling Annie's mouth, and the whole situation had put Cat off the potion enough to avoid ever going near it again.

But Professor Köhler had other ideas, assigning the Wideye Potion to his sixth-year class, either ignorant of its presence in the black market or in an attempt to ensure the quality of any vials of it that might end up there. Either way, he seemed more critical than usual as he paced the aisles of dungeon classroom, commenting on Minnie Longbottom's inadequate method of dicing snake fangs and Malcolm Bole's apparent inability to count the proper number of dried billywig stings.

Cat breathed nervously and double-checked in her textbook that she was dicing the snake fangs correctly. She glanced at Scorpius, usually Köhler's favorite student, to make sure that the base of the potion was simmering, but instead realized he was instead leaning back in his chair, the potion forgotten, his eyes narrowed at the back of someone's head. She followed his gaze to a mane of dark red wavy hair, its owner the indisputable Rose Weasley.

Cat nearly diced her finger off.

"Scorpius!" she hissed, and there was a clatter as all four of the legs of his chair suddenly returned to the ground.

He swore under his breath and returned his attention to the cauldron, but he still kept looking up to glare at Weasley every so often.

Cat puzzled over this as she continued to chop. The obvious explanation hit her like a Stinging Hex – Scorpius had a crush on Weasley! That would explain their strange stalking of the redheaded witch on her date at the Three Broomsticks last weekend and why Albus hadn't seemed quite as concerned as his blonde-haired best friend. It also explained his weird pleasure in seeing her date go badly.

But as far as Cat knew, nothing had thawed between Rose and Scorpius. Their everyday interactions were still less than civil, usually barbed with insults or occasionally jinxes, if one got angry enough. And Scorpius had a girlfriend, Jaqueline, and they were apparently amorous enough to leave marks on each other. The hickey she saw on his neck too weeks ago was still all-too-vivid in her memory.

Cat frowned. Nothing made sense. Snapping out of her reverie, she looked down at her prep work and noticed that she had completely pulverized the snake fang. Internally, she blamed Scorpius for mucking everything up as she stood to grab some more of the ingredient from the stores on the side of the classroom.

Unfortunately, this act did not go unnoticed by Professor Köhler.

"You should have already added that ingredient to the mixture by now, Miss Zabini," he stated simply as she passed by.

Cat tried not to look too hard into his steely blue eyes. "Yes, sir," she responded. "I'm right on it."

"Best not to hurry," Köhler added with a stern look. "These are NEWT level Potions. They require patience."

Cat nodded, and returned to her desk.

To her dismay, Scorpius had done nothing in her absence. The cauldron was still simmering, but just barely, and he hadn't even begun adding the standard ingredient. "What is up with you today?" she demanded impatiently.

"Nothing," he muttered defensively. "Now just dice those fangs already so I can add them in."

Cat scowled, but resolved to be patient with Scorpius today. If he was really hung up on Rose Weasley, he had bigger problems than potion-brewing.

Her resolve lasted about ten minutes, when she noticed the potion almost boiling over.

"What are you doing?" she hissed at him. "The potion is supposed to be at medium heat. It's not supposed to boil at all!"

"If you're so worried about it, why don't you take over?"

Cat fumed. Her anxiety about potion-brewing was a sore spot for her, and Scorpius knew it. There was a reason he was always the one standing in front of the cauldron, but blinded by her frustration, Cat did something out of character. She lashed out at him.

"You know what? Maybe I will. Apparently you can't do _anything_ right today."

Cat had lit the match, but Rose Weasley was about to start the fire.

"Can't do anything right today? How about ever?"

The remark wasn't loud. It had been directed at her partner, Marisol Chadwick, but intentionally loud enough for Scorpius to hear it, and he was obviously not in the mood to back down from the fight. Abandoning the potion, he stood up and walked around to the front of the desk, where he tapped Weasley on the shoulder.

"Excuse me, Weasley?" he asked with faux-politeness. "Is there something you wanted to say to me?"

Cat groaned. This was _not_ going to end well. Because if Scorpius wasn't backing down, neither would Weasley. But her attention was diverted away from them temporarily when the potion finally began to overflow.

She let out a small yelp, and missed Weasley's response to Scorpius as she waved her wand over the whole thing and casted a stasis charm, wondering why her partner hadn't had the forethought to try the same thing.

Cat had about a sixty second window with the charm before it would start to have adverse results on the potion, so she consulted the book for the stirring pattern: three times clockwise, pause for ten seconds, repeat four times.

She took a deep breath, and canceled the stasis charm. She could do this.

But Scorpius and Rose were determined to make this more difficult for her.

"Just because I don't have my wand up my arse the whole time—"

"Nothing gets through your thick skull, nothing at all—"

"Maybe if you thought about the people around you for ONCE in your life—"

"How dare you say I'm selfish, Malfoy! We all know the real egotistic jerk is YOU!"

Cat was still breathing heavily, about halfway through the stirring process. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed poor Marisol Chadwick doing the same thing, except Albus Potter had stepped in to help her. She fought back a twinge of jealousy. Why hadn't he stopped to help her?

She was almost finished when a horrible thought struck her. She didn't know the wand movement to complete the potion! It was written down in the text, but it wasn't one she was familiar with. She couldn't perform it if she tried.

At her wit's end, Cat cast a second stasis charm, knowing that it would affect the outcome of her potion, but past the point of caring. She leafed to the index section of the book to try to find a guide to the stabilizing wand movements, but she was starting to sweat now, knowing she was running out of time. She only had sixty seconds before the whole thing would blow up in her face, probably sooner, and she was cursing herself for letting Scorpius do all the brewing all these years. Not to mention the fact that Socrpius and Rose's argument was escalating, attracting the attention of several classmates now, though Köhler had temporarily disappeared to his office.

"Hey, Scorpius…" Cat tried to interrupt. "I could really use your help over here!"

Her words fell on deaf ears, for Scorpius was too invested in his argument to notice.

"You sit there all high-and-mighty, Weasley, but don't you dare pretend you understand my life!" It was a testament to how upset Scorpius was that his hair, usually perfectly coiffed, was in a complete disarray, tendrils sticking to his forehead.

Rose was equally as incensed. Her dark red hair was frizzier than normal and seemed to be sticking out in all directions. "I know enough. Enough to know that I should have known better. You've always been a slimy, Slytherin scumbag and you always will be. Nothing more than the spawn of a Death Eater."

She didn't spit in his face afterwards, but she might as well have for the effect her words had on Scorpius. It was a well-known fact that Draco Malfoy had been a Death Eater, but it was equally well-known that Scorpius hated to be reminded of the fact.

Cat's eyes grew big, and she made eye contact with Albus, who attempted to cut in.

"Hey Rose, let's stop for a second here. I know you didn't mean that."

With his words, Weasley took a small step back, but her eyes remained darkened and narrowed in on Scorpius. The tension between the two was palpable. Cat was used to their typical exchange of barbs and insults, but this felt different. There was a heightened sense of emotion behind their words, and neither was holding anything back. Both were going for the jugular.

But in the meantime, her Wideye Potion was equally as volatile.

"Umm, Scorpius!" she tried again, with more urgency, but her blond friend was still oblivious to her existence.

"You're right, Weasley," Scorpius said with a small smile, except there was nothing friendly about it. It was almost sinister the way his teeth flashed for the briefest of seconds. He took a step forward, closing the gap between the two of them.

"I am Death Eater spawn. But at least I'm making my own name for myself. You're just another Weasley. It'll be easy to surpass the expectations that come with my last name, but you'll never live up to yours."

Rose blanched, making Cat think she was about to pass out, but recovered a second later, her face hardening. She was literally shaking with anger, and drew her wand quickly before Albus and Marisol even had time to protest. The action drew the attention of the whole Potions classroom, including Professor Köhler, who had emerged from his office, which meant that everyone witnessed Cat's potion blowing up in her face.

She sat in shock for a few seconds as the magenta potion dripped down her face, trickling down her neck and staining her white blouse. She didn't bother to wipe it off as she stood up slowly, training her gaze on the partner that had abandoned her.

"Scorpius Malfoy, I am going to MURDER you!"

And that was how Scorpius completely pissed off two witches in the span of one Potions class.

* * *

Cat ended up spending a grand total of four hours in the Hospital Wing after Potions. In addition to being practically hyperactive as a result of the exploded Wideye Potion, her eyeballs had grown to twice their usual size, causing temporary blindness. Annie kindly informed her later that she had looked like a frog on Adderall.

What made it worse was that she had been taken care of not by one, but by two very attractive wizards while she was still in that state. Scorpius had stalked off afterwards, but of course Al Potter, ever the gentleman, had volunteered to walk her to the Hospital Wing. Annie had also volunteered, but keeping Cat from wandering off in her hyperactive state had been most decidedly a two-person job. And to top it all off, Healer Osbourne was on-call in the Hospital Wing. The young healer was only a few years out of Healing School, but he could also pass for a male model. There had been a problem last year with girls faking illnesses and visiting the Hospital wing with the hope that Osbourne was working.

In her current condition, Cat would have much preferred the no-nonsense manner of Madam Pomfrey. Luckily, the time passed quickly, as Osbourne gave her some Daydream Essence to distract her while he worked and some Murtlap Tentacle to numb the pain in her face.

The first thing she saw when her sight returned two hours later was Healer Osbourne's gigantic bicep. He was leaning into her to take her heart rate, but Cat couldn't tear her eyes away from the way his arm muscles fought against the short-sleeves of his pale blue Healer's robes. She told herself the staring was a result of her injury, which was only partially true, but she was too wired to care if he noticed.

Osbourne made her stay another two hours until she had passed a battery of vision tests. Then, he released her conditionally, reminding her that she probably wouldn't get any sleep that night until the potion completely wore off and that she should avoid straining her eyes any further in the next 24 hours.

Cat obliged gratefully. Pomfrey usually mandated overnights for these types of incidents.

Her stomach growled painfully as she left the Hospital Wing, so she ran down to the Great Hall and managed to catch the tail end of dinner. Luckily, there was still some roast beef left, so she cobbled together a sandwich, ate some green beans, and washed the whole thing down with a glass of pumpkin juice before heading off to the library. Scorpius was still nowhere to be found, and all three of her girl friends had refused her offer of studying. Annie had been in the middle of regaling Dahlia and Cecily with the story of the Potions' incident, but Cat wasn't really in the mood, so she skipped dessert and made her way up to her favorite section in the library. Thanks to Scorpius, she not only had to review the material on Wideye potions for the exam, but she had completely missed her History of Magic lecture in the afternoon. She would have to find someone from class to borrow notes from.

She spotted a likely candidate, well-known for his note-taking ability, just before she passed through the entrance to the library. He also happened to be rather cute, so Cat felt compelled to double back first and check her reflection against a nearby suit of armor just to make sure all the swelling from the potion had gone down. Her eyes still looked a little wider than normal, but she figured it wasn't going to get any better, so she took a deep breath and headed inside.

Benjamin Goldstein was sitting in the main study area of the library, a pencil tucked charmingly behind his ear as he copied out an essay. Cat approached him with a smile.

"Hi, Benjamin," she greeted shyly.

"Oh, hi Cat," he returned, looking up from his essay and removing the pencil from behind his ear. "How are you? I heard about the incident in Potions this afternoon."

She grimaced, and then tried to hide it. Benjamin wasn't even in NEWT Potions, so the news of her unfortunate incident must have circulated around the whole castle by now.

"Umm, yeah. That happened."

Benjamin looked uneasy, so she quickly added on to her statement. "But I'm fine now, so that's all that matters. How are you?"

She forced a smile, and he smiled back so genuinely that Cat temporarily forgot about the disaster that had been her morning.

"Pretty well, actually. The Amateur Arithmancers Club had its elections today, and I was voted president."

"Merlin, Benjamin, that's incredible!" Cat exclaimed, though privately she was surprised by the existence of a club dedicated to the study of Arithmancy. She wasn't even really sure what Arithmancy was, but decided not to mention that in front of Benjamin. He was a Ravenclaw after all; he might be offended by her complete lack of knowledge.

Luckily, he didn't seem to notice. "Yeah, I'm pretty thrilled about it actually. The club does some neat stuff, and it'll look good on my resume when I apply for some internships this summer."

"Well, that's great." Cat managed. The thought of a summer internship had never struck her. Ever since she was a girl, her mother had drilled into her head the importance of a coming-of-age party the summer after sixth year to the point where she had forgotten there were other things people could choose to do with their summer besides getting fitted for a ball gown and practicing their curtsies.

"What kind of internships are you interested in?"

"Well, there's one primarily," Benjamin began, and Cat was immediately transfixed by his description of the Undersecretary's Internship, which was apparently a highly competitive summer position within the Ministry of Magic, working directly for the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister. Cat had only ever had a passing interest in politics, but to hear Benjamin talk about the projects he would assisting with and the people he would be rubbing elbows with gave her a new appreciation for the field. And to think she usually spent her summers working on her tan by the family pool. The most intellectual pursuit she achieved had been reading a few novels.

"For what it's worth," Cat commented after a lull in the conversation. "I think you would be an excellent candidate for the job."

"Thanks, I appreciate it," Benjamin responded, dazzling her with another wide smile. He ran a hand through his short curly hair. "Do you have any plans for the summer?"

Cat froze. After listening to Benjamin talk about his goals so passionately, she felt silly telling him about her coming-of-age ball.

"I'm not exactly sure yet," she responded, a beat too late. "I mean, we usually holiday somewhere, and my mother has been talking about Portugal this year, but nothing like your internship. It sounds incredible! You would be doing such important work."

Instead of taking in the compliment, Benjamin turned the conversation on its head. His eyes serious, he shot Cat a long look.

"You know, it's definitely not too late to apply for an internship of your own. Madam Pince has a whole rack of flyers advertising internships in whatever field you can think of: magical law, potions ingredient harvesting, spell-crafting, and even magical sports management. I'm sure there's something you would like to do."

Cat's ears perked up at the mention of spell-crafting. She had yet to have a formal session with Professor Flitwick, but that hadn't prevented her from continuing to theorize on her own outside class. However, the likelihood was slim that her mother would allow her to participate in a program like that. An internship for the Ministry of Magic? She might as well chop off all her hair and start dressing like a boy if she wanted to give her mother a heart attack.

"I'll look into," she said noncommittally.

"You really should," Benjamin responded, so earnestly that Cat felt badly about lying to him so easily. The corner of his mouth titled up then, a little mischievously. "For a Slytherin, you're actually pretty smart."

After the more serious topic of conversation, his sarcasm took her aback, but she followed it up with a remark of her own. "Ambitious for a Ravenclaw, aren't we? I thought you all are supposed to keep your noses in books the whole summer."

Benjamin actually laughed out loud, and Cat felt inordinately pleased with herself. Somehow they always ended up teasing each other about their respective houses. It was beginning to feel like an inside joke.

"I've been procrastinating enough talking to you," she said after another shared smile. "I should go and start some of my homework."

Benjamin pushed some of his textbooks aside. "You could sit here if you want?"

Cat was flattered, as well as tempted, but she was more productive alone, in her secluded corner of the library. Plus, she had a letter from her mother to open and respond to, and these tasks were always better conducted in private.

"Thanks, but I've already distracted you too much. See you around, though!"

She walked off slowly, and attempted one of those over-the-shoulder smiles Cecily always swore worked like a charm. She wasn't sure how well she pulled it off, but she thought Benjamin had looked a little disappointed when she declined his offer of sharing a table.

He was definitely cute, she decided internally. Cute enough to make her forget that the whole reason she approached him in the first place was to borrow his History of Magic notes, but there was no turning back now. As she made her way to the back of the library, she tried to quiet the squirming feeling in her stomach that signaled the beginnings of a crush. She would have to ask Annie if he was single. There would be no more pining after unavailable guys.

* * *

Cat breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that her favorite table was unoccupied. It was quiet, save for a group of second-year Ravenclaws on the edge of the section frantically trying to finish a group project. She had business to take care of, the kind of business that called for privacy and her favorite corner of the library. She had a letter from her mother.

In her last brief missive to her mother, Cat had danced around the topic of her upcoming spell-crafting lessons with Flitwick. She had mentioned private sessions with the diminutive professor and her burgeoning interest in the field of spell-crafting, but failed to link the two together. But she shouldn't have worried so much about how to present her extracurricular interests to her mother at all, for Natalia Hyde had dismissed all mention of academics and her career interests in her typical airy tone that made Cat question if she had even mentioned the topics at all.

 _Darling Catalina,_

 _Your mum misses you something awful! You have no idea the burden these preparations are taking on me. My skin has been positively ghastly from the stress, and I've had to schedule an extra appointment per week with Madame Appiel to keep up my appearance._

 _I've officially booked the Water's Edge Hotel as the location of your ball. The event coordinator showed me around the other day, and once I saw their newest addition—an outdoor balcony jutting out over the water—I was sold. This has to be the place where my darling daughter celebrates her seventeenth birthday. And the best part is that the venue has a capacity of 400 people – enough for all the most important people of society to attend!_

 _Speaking of the invitees, do send me a list of any personal acquaintances you wish to invite. I always love to see your school friends, just make sure they are comfortable dressing for such a formal ( & spectacular!) event._

 _I am glad to hear about your involvement at school. Just make sure all your extra studying isn't getting in the way of socializing a little bit. I heard from Marigold Davis that Zachariah Nott is single now, and he's such a fine young man. Surely you wouldn't be opposed to a date? I could always contact Daphne Nott and set something up, if you wish. I don't want to tell you what to do, but if you don't start looking now, all the eligible wizards will be taken by the time you graduate!_

 _But don't fret, darling. You are beautiful and will have a wonderful life, I am sure of it. The man of your dreams is out there._

 _Your father also sends his love. Give Matty a kiss for me as well._

 _All my love,_

 _Natalia_

Trying to resist the urge to scream, Cat forced herself to take a deep breath. She purposely hadn't mentioned her stupid ball at all in her last letter, but it was like her mother didn't even read her words before sounding off about the newest developments for an event that was still almost a whole year away. There was no discussion of any of the developments in her life that she had written about. Instead her mother had dedicated a whole paragraph to her prospects—a boyfriend was the last thing on Cat's mind.

Well, maybe not the _last_ thing on her mind. But certainly not with any of the wizards her mother wanted to set her up with. Zachariah Nott may be a "fine young man" according to Marigold Davis, but Cat knew for a fact that he could be found lighting up a joint in the Astronomy Tower every other night with his other stoner buddies from Slytherin.

Cat laughed out loud a little at this, a harsh chuckle that contained more derision than mirth. What would her mother say to that?

She scribbled off a few sentences in response, acknowledging the tragedy that was the stressed-out state of her mother's skin as well as an inane sentence about the Water's Edge Hotel, "a good choice," despite the fact that she had already indicated her preference for the bloody event to be held at home. She signed off with "Love, Catalina" but her feelings for her mother were more complicated than that at the moment.

To distract herself, she threw herself into her Potions homework. Scorpius had mentioned sheepishly that in addition to an essay on the applications of the Wideye Potion, they had to schedule another session to re-brew the damn thing and write a short paper on the dangers of inattentive brewing.

She inwardly cursed Scorpius's stupidity and its consequences, but managed to finish up the homework pretty quickly. Next, she moved onto Charms, reading a chapter of the text in advance of the next lesson. But Charms was a dangerous topic of study for Cat, because for every time she managed to stay focused on the required material, the next five times she would get side-tracked and delve into the possible modifications for a particular spell. This time was no different. They were covering Aguamenti, the Water-Making Spell, but Cat spent too much time deriving the incantation from its original Latin and theorizing about its wand movement, and before she knew it, it was almost midnight, and the library was closing.

With some regret, Cat closed her notebook and began stuffing her books into her bag. She was just fixing the drawstring when a movement in the Restricted Section caught her eye. From her table in the middle of the History of Magic section, she had a clear view down the aisle to wrought gates of the Restricted Section, which had been thrust open without her noticing.

And just as suddenly as it appeared, a tall figure with dark hair disappeared into nothing. Cat wasn't sure she had seen anything—she wasn't wearing her glasses, after all—but after she blinked, she noticed the gate had been closed once more.

Abandoning her bookbag, she marched down the aisle toward the Restricted Section to investigate. She told herself it was her duty as a Prefect to look into infractions such as these, but to tell the truth, she was more curious than anything. That figure had looked familiar.

She thought she felt a strange gust of air moving in the opposite direction as she arrived at the Restricted Section, but turned her attention to the gate.

It was closed but unlocked, as it should be. Fifth-years and above were allowed access with the permission of a professor, but it was the habit of Madam Pince to accompany students on their forays into this section. Cat had spent enough late nights in the library to know that the matronly librarian usually locked it right before she closed the library itself, a little after midnight.

Cat peered through the gate, not exactly sure what she could find that would provide proof that someone had been there. She looked down the length of the shelves—there! There was a book out of place. It must have been disturbed in the last day, because Pince was maniacal in making sure all the spines were lined up before closing the library at night.

Breaking the rules herself, Cat tugged at the gate. The hinge squeaked quietly behind her, and she was all too aware that her jurisdiction as a Prefect didn't necessarily cover this sort of investigation, but by this point, her curiosity was too much to handle.

Gingerly, she pulled the disturbed book further away from the shelf. It was a burnt orange color, with a loopy golden text on the front. It read: "The Art of Concealing Magical Signatures: Advanced Wards" by Hephaestus Emberton.

Cat frowned. That was rather underwhelming. She had expected a book on dark magic, or at the very least forbidden jinxes.

She didn't have much time to examine that particular book, however, because she heard the tell-tale curse words of Pince as she straightened up the section of books left haphazardly by the second-year Ravenclaws. Shoving the book back in place, she did her best to quietly slip out of the section, making sure the gate closed behind her.

She was just sliding the straps of her book bag on her shoulders when Pince herself walked by. The elderly witch admonished her slightly for still being in the library, but not as strictly as she could have. Cat nodded, and headed toward the exit, still thinking about her strange sighting in the Restricted Section.

She still wasn't entirely sure of what she had seen. It could be her mind playing tricks on her, but the figure had looked an awful lot like Albus Potter.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Hope you all enjoyed the latest chapter. What was your favorite part? I would love to know what you thought. As a side note, I wasn't going to mention Albus at all this chapter (until the end), but I couldn't resist sneaking him in early and having him appear in Potions class. Was it really him in the library? And what do you think he's up to?

Either way, thanks for reading! The next chapter should be up within the next two weeks.


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